Flipboard’s Surf app is a feed reader for the fediverse

Mike McCue, the CEO of Flipboard and an web entrepreneur because the Netscape days, is a real believer within the fediverse. He doesn’t love the phrase: he’d a lot relatively name it “the social net.” But no matter you wish to name the open, decentralized, interconnected social networking expertise that apps like Mastodon and Bluesky promise, McCue is completely satisfied it’s the long run.

For the final yr or so, McCue and his crew have been fully overhauling the Flipboard platform to make it part of the social net. Once the change is finished, Flipboard might be a totally decentralized option to uncover and skim stuff from throughout the web. The course of appears to be going effective, although it doesn’t appear poised to take over the fediverse the best way Threads might if it absolutely opened up.

At the identical time, although, the Flipboard crew has been engaged on one thing even larger. That one thing is an app referred to as Surf (to not be confused with the opposite just lately launched Surf), which McCue referred to as “the world’s first browser for the social net.” He first mentioned that to me slightly over a yr in the past, when Surf was largely only a bunch of mock-ups and a slide deck. Now, the app has been in beta for the previous few months — I’ve been utilizing it most of that point — and a public beta is launching right now. Not everybody can get in; McCue says he needs to herald some curators and creators first, to ensure that there to be a number of stuff in Surf when everybody else will get entry. And he guarantees that’s coming quickly.

But wait, sorry, again to the entire “browser for the social net” factor. McCue’s greatest rationalization of Surf’s massive concept is that this: in a decentralized social world, the web might be much less about web sites and extra about feeds. “You gained’t put in, like, theverge.com and go to the web site for The Verge, however you’ll be able to put in ‘the verge’ and go to the ActivityPub feed for The Verge.” Your Threads timeline is a feed; each Bluesky Starter Pack is a feed; each creator you observe is simply producing a feed of content material.   

Surf’s job, in that world, is that will help you uncover and discover all these feeds. The app can see three sorts of feeds: something from ActivityPub, which suggests issues like Mastodon and Threads and Pixelfed; something from AT Protocol, which suggests Bluesky; and any RSS feed. You can seek for feeds by subject, writer, or creator; you’ll be able to curate your personal feeds by combining different feeds. And then you’ll be able to share these feeds, which different folks can mix and recombine. It’s all slightly complicated. Just think about a properly designed, vertically scrolling feed, someplace between a Twitter timeline and the Apple News homepage.

A feed will be made up of virtually any sort of content material, which presents a tough design drawback for Surf. It must be equally adept as a social community, a information app, a video platform, and a podcast participant. Combining all that stuff into one place isn’t simply the aim; it’s the entire level. And it’s very laborious to do all of these issues effectively.

Personally, essentially the most eye-opening second in my time testing Surf has been the best way the app allows you to mechanically filter a feed. I arrange a feed that’s simply all my favourite stuff: my go-to podcasts, must-read blogs, a few can’t-miss YouTube channels, and my favourite of us on Bluesky. I can open that feed and see all the pieces, so as, it doesn’t matter what it’s or who it got here from. But I can even filter it to simply present all of the movies within the feed or faucet on “Listen” to show it right into a podcast queue. 

Surf isn’t but a full-featured app for any of those makes use of, a lot much less all of them, nevertheless it’s already a fairly helpful app for every kind of media. It presents movies like an endlessly scrolling TikTook feed, which is definitely a fairly enjoyable option to flip by means of a YouTube channel. Posts with hyperlinks are formatted like information tales, with massive pictures and headlines. It’s not a very dense timeline-scrolling expertise, both — the entire thing is extra like Flipboard’s flippy magazines than the For You pages we’re used to.

Because it’s attempting to compile a bunch of disparate platforms into one, search will be messy — I discovered 5 profiles with my identify and movie, as an example, and it’s not apparent which one is the one you’re searching for. Surf can also be designed to be interactive, however proper now, that just about solely works in the event you’re a Mastodon person liking Mastodon posts. For most different issues, it’s both sort of damaged or totally damaged. For now, and doubtless for some time, Surf goes to be a lot better as a consumption device than a social one.

McCue sees the social net as the start of a wholly new web. He even makes use of old-web metaphors to clarify these early merchandise: the present period we’re in is like AOL again within the day, “a walled backyard that contained all of the innovation within the walled backyard”; Surf is like old-school Yahoo, “a set of feeds that different folks have made.” He needs to allow paid feeds, so publishers, creators, and curators can generate income on the platform. He has massive concepts about customized designs for feeds, to allow them to look extra like homepages. 

There’s an terrible lot left to construct — to not point out a whole lot of protocols and instruments left to persuade all of the web’s platforms and publishers to work with. But I’ve been speaking to McCue about this for 2 years now, and his conviction and optimism haven’t wavered a bit. When I inform him that I positively wavered — that I used to be as soon as all in on ActivityPub as the long run however am anxious seeing Bluesky develop on one other protocol and listening to a number of the points Threads and others are having with ActivityPub — he simply laughs. One, he says, that’s the way it all the time goes in these early phases. Two, that’s what Surf is supposed to repair.

To show his level, McCue opens up a feed filled with basketball content material, created by David Rushing. Rushing was a giant determine in early NBA Threads, a group that has splintered due to a few of Threads’ moderation and group insurance policies. Now, persons are posting with #nbathreads on Bluesky and elsewhere, too. It’s messy. But Surf, McCue says, can carry it again collectively. He begins scrolling Rushing’s customized feed: “You’re seeing Bluesky posts, Mastodon posts, Threads posts, Flipboard posts, something with the hashtag #nbathreads throughout the entire social net. If you submit a podcast, in the event you submit a YouTube video, something with the hashtag #nbathreads, it’ll present up on this feed.” Rushing can add or take away particular person posts and even use Flipboard’s filtering programs to do away with something that feels political, mentions playing, or no matter else he needs to do. 

McCue is virtually giddy as he scrolls by means of all this basketball content material. This is the entire thing, proper right here. “Ultimately,” he says, “you’re simply not going to care whether or not one thing is on Threads — I don’t write you a separate sort of e mail since you’re on Gmail, proper?” People will use a number of apps, there might be a number of communities, and that’s good. “There are nerds on Bluesky, there are nerds on Threads. How can all of the nerds collect collectively?” That’s the query for the fediverse — sorry, the social net — and Surf appears to be like prefer it may be the most effective reply anybody’s give you up to now.