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Social magazine app makerFlipboardis reinventing itself for the new era of theopen societal web . While the company ’s original app allowed user to collect content from web log , news show websites , and traditional societal culture medium services like Facebook and Twitter in club to produce curated magazines , its Modern app calledSurf , launching into invite - only beta today , will instead set aside substance abuser to browse and research the loose societal vane . This include services like Mastodon and Bluesky , as well as other public World Wide Web substance like blogs , podcasts , YouTube videos , and more .
To work , Surf back up heart-to-heart protocol likeRSS , which provides feeds for updates from websites and podcasts , Bluesky’snewerAT Protocol , andActivityPub , which powers decentralized X competitorMastodon , plus Pixelfed , PeerTube , Friendica , Ghost , and others , and is integrated with Meta ’s own X competitor , InstagramThreads .
According to Flipboard CEO Mike McCue , Surf has been in development for almost two years to work many of the problems user face when they desire to will larger , centralised social sensitive services in favour of those built with unfastened protocols .
“ Under the hood , it ’s a web browser app for the societal web , ” says McCue . “ [ Surf ] lets you surf any feed on the social web , whether it ’s ActivityPub , AT Proto , or RSS , ” he continues . “ People , of row , have their profile — those are feed that you’re able to surfboard . There are hashtags that are feeds . Searches can be a feed . ”
But what get the app muscular is that you may also construct your own impost feeds that combine sources of your own choosing .
For instance , if you desire to follow a specific topic , like AI example exploitation , or a hobby like mountain biking , you could immix feed that include the multitude you ’d care to follow , real - clip search , keywords , democratic hashtags , specific RSS feeds for websites and blogs you like , favored YouTube groove , podcasts , and more .
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Plus , Surf gives you a identification number of features to salutary configure and control the custom feeds you plan .
The app comes with some 30,000 pre - defined topics you’re able to fuse and configure . Even if you add people or site that post about a ambit of different subjects , you could go into your custom feed ’s preferences and on/off switch on an alternative to “ Keep Feed on Topic . ”
This automatically filters out any word or posts that are n’t about your topic of interest from appear in the feed .
You — and optionally , other contributors — can also further configure the feed to include or exclude reply , reposts , or mature content , and alter how the feed will be ordered .
Custom feed can also tolerate multiple topic , if desired . ( Initially , this will be by using “ AND ” to create a custom provender that combines two topics . But later , you ’ll be able to curate feed by sayingthis“OR”that , Flipboard says ) .
As you browse a feed , there are multiple ways to view it , too .
A “ Discuss ” tab offers a Twitter - corresponding timeline experience where post from across societal networks and sites are featured , which you’re able to also like , reply to , repost , and bookmark , when logged in with your Mastodon certificate . ( Support for Bluesky login will arrive in a few week . )
However , you’re able to also graze the feed by other tablet , “ Watch , ” “ Read , ” “ hear , ” and “ Look , ” if you filter the feed to show only videos , news article , podcasts , and photo , severally .
In the “ Watch ” mode picture view , browsing the feed feels a luck like scrolling TikTok .
Feed owner can select which of these is the feed ’s default tab .
The app can be particularly useful for those times when a community has become fractured across multiple services , as was the pillow slip with those post to the hashtag NBA Threads on Metas ’ yarn app . Some people left Threads for Bluesky and Mastodon after Meta ’s mitigation issues , which meant users now had to turn to multiple apps to follow the community .
With Surf , the residential district has been reunify by direction of a custom feed that pulls in content from different service .
As Surf was being build , Flipboard was also integrating its powder magazine app with the opened societal entanglement , also make out as the fediverse , by connecting it with more open services like Mastodon and Bluesky .
“ These existing experiences that have been made undetermined — that ’s been like the first undulation of the social web , ” McCue excuse , consult to the updates his party made to Flipboard . “ Now , I think we ’re entering the next wave … which is imagining all Modern kinds of substance abuser experience that we ’ve never examine before , base on the power of the social web . ”
Surf is currently in an invite - only , closed beta , where the first testers will be those who are likely interested in construction feed because they ’ve already build things like custom feed or Starter Packs on Bluesky , or Twitter / X Lists , for lesson .
The app is ab initio useable on iOS and Android on an invite - only ground while in beta testing , but will later be available on the screen background connection .
