Otis Chandler, cofounder and former CEO of Goodreads, is among those who have launched Smashing, a new reading app that will provide a daily feed of news, podcasts, and social media posts based on users’ interests. Currently, the app is only available on Apple iOS.
The app employs both AI and human curation to determine which stories are a best fit for its audience, with content recommendations linking directly to the original publishers’ sites. It also includes a feature called Smashing AI Questions, which provides AI-powered contextual prompts such as “show all sides,” “tear this apart,” and “make it funny,” to alter the perspective of a given set of content.
Smashing is developing a “community of curators” who will offer their takes on a given subject, with users having the ability to vote on a given curator’s taste and reliability. Each curator’s reputation will be measured in “Curator Points.” The top curators on the app, per a Smashing press release, include “accomplished journalists, entrepreneurs, media executives, software engineers, authors, and more.”
“People online are drowning in an ever-rising sea of content,” Chandler said. “With Smashing, I think we’ve come across a winning combination of people curating and an AI matching content to readers. The internet is brimming with more interesting articles, podcasts, and tweets than ever before. They’re just harder to find. That's what Smashing is all about—helping people find and share the best of the best in their interests.”
Other investors in Smashing include Greg Veen (cofounder of Typekit, acquired by Adobe, and MeasureMap, acquired by Google), Michael Mraz (formerly of Condé Nast, Cool Hunting, and Hearst), and Dan Barrett (software architect & LLM whisperer). Smashing is backed by venture capital investors Advancit Capital, Blockchange, Offline Ventures, Power of N Ventures, and True Ventures, as well as various angel investors.
