The company behind the news app Flipboard just launched something called Surf, which is sort of like an RSS feed for the open social web. The app allows users to create feeds that pull from the open social web, including services like Mastodon and Bluesky. It also sources content from blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos.
Flipboard CEO Mike McCue calls it a “browser for the social web” and that description makes a whole lot of sense. Surf supports a whole bunch of open protocols, including RSS, Bluesky’s AT Protocol and ActivityPub. That last one is used to power decentralized platforms like Mastodon, Threads, Pixelfed, PeerTube and Friendica, among others. This follows Flipboard itself moving to the fediverse, which allowed for full interoperability with Mastodon and other decentralized networks.
The app has been in development for nearly two years and lets users build custom feeds using a combination of sources. If you wanted to follow a niche topic like, say, 3D printing, you could add notable people to a feed, along with hashtags, specific RSS feeds, preferred podcasts and more. As of the initial beta launch, Surf comes with 30,000 predefined topics to explore. Custom feeds can also explore multiple topics at once, to personalize things.
The app’s home page includes a wide swath of curated feeds to follow that are organized into sections like Featured, Trending, Communities and Expert Voices. Feeds are configurable in a number of ways, which lets users include or exclude stuff like replies, reposts or mature content. Thankfully, the order of the feed is also fully adjustable, with an option for a Twitter-like timeline.
This sounds pretty cool right? One of the main problems in this new era of the social web, in which the old guard has lost so much steam, is the lack of a centralized hub. This looks to solve that problem to some extent.
Now a spot of bad news. Surf is technically available right now, but only as an invite-only, closed beta. If you can get a hold of one of those invites, the app is available for both iOS and Android, with a desktop client coming soon.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/flipboard-just-launched-surf-which-is-sort-of-like-an-rss-feed-for-the-open-social-web-184015833.html?src=rss