Goodreads‘ co-founder Otis Chandler is back to build the next big app community. But this time, his focus isn’t on books; it’s on the content you can find online, including news articles, blog posts, social media posts, podcasts and more. With Smashing, an AI and community-powered content recommendation app, now launching into an invite-only beta, the goal is to help connect users to their interests by surfacing the internet’s hidden gems.
The launch comes at a time when many news consumers are still lamenting the loss of Artifact, the AI news reader from Instagram’s co-founder that recently sold to TechCrunch parent Yahoo.
At the same time, the media ecosystem is becoming more fragmented than ever with journalists establishing their own newsletters and Substacks. Twitter, once a hot spot for finding the latest breaking news, has morphed into a more right-leaning app “X,” whose existence has prompted a host of new competitors. In addition, changes at Google and Meta have resulted in a sizable drop in traffic to online publishers, leading to widespread media layoffs. And with AI, the situation looks like it may worsen, as apps and Google begin offering AI summaries of news, potentially losing publishers even more clicks.
Chandler believes Smashing can address many of these problems by not only surfacing the articles and posts that are worth people’s time but also encouraging users to visit the publishers’ sites to read more.
Chandler said:
“I named Goodreads ‘Goodreads’ and not ‘Goodbooks’ because I one day hoped to add articles.”
As it turned out, “books” was a large enough category on its own to sustain the app, which sold to Amazon in 2013. Chandler continued to work there until five years ago.
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she's not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.
