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

Mike McCue, the CEO of Flipboard and an internet entrepreneur since the Netscape days, is a real consentr in the fediverse. He doesn’t cherish the word: he’d much rather call it “the social web.” But wantipathyver you want to call the uncover, decentralized, interconnected social nettoiling experience that apps appreciate Mastodon and Bluesky promise, McCue is absolutely guaranteed it’s the future.

For the last year or so, McCue and his team have been finishly overhauling the Flipboard platcreate to originate it a part of the social web. Once the alter is done, Flipboard will be a brimmingy decentralized way to find and read stuff from atraverse the internet. The process seems to be going fine, though it doesn’t seem poised to get over the fediverse the way Threads could if it brimmingy uncovered up.

At the same time, though, the Flipboard team has been toiling on someskinnyg even hugeger. That someskinnyg is an app called Surf (not to be besavageerd with the other recently started Surf), which McCue called “the world’s first browser for the social web.” He first shelp that to me a little over a year ago, when Surf was mostly fair a bunch of mock-ups and a slide deck. Now, the app has been in beta for the last restrictcessitate months — I’ve been using it most of that time — and a accessible beta is starting today. Not everyone can get in; McCue says he wants to convey in some curators and creators first, in order for there to be lots of stuff in Surf when everyone else gets access. And he promises that’s coming soon.

But postpone, sorry, back to the whole “browser for the social web” skinnyg. McCue’s best exarrangeation of Surf’s huge theory is this: in a decentralized social world, the internet will be less about websites and more about feeds. “You won’t put in, appreciate, theverge.com and go to the website for The Verge, but you can put in ‘the verge’ and go to the ActivityPub feed for The Verge.” Your Threads timeline is a feed; every Bluesky Starter Pack is a feed; every creator you trail is fair producing a feed of greeted.   

Surf’s job, in that world, is to help you find and check all those feeds. The app can see three benevolents of feeds: anyskinnyg from ActivityPub, which uncomardents skinnygs appreciate Mastodon and Threads and Pixelfed; anyskinnyg from AT Protocol, which uncomardents Bluesky; and any RSS feed. You can search for feeds by topic, beginer, or creator; you can curate your own feeds by combining other feeds. And then you can split those feeds, which other people can join and rejoin. It’s all a little confusing. Just imagine a kindly arrangeed, verticassociate scrolling feed, somewhere between a Twitter timeline and the Apple News homepage.

A feed can be made up of almost any benevolent of greeted, which currents a tricky arrange problem for Surf. It has to be equassociate adept as a social nettoil, a news app, a video platcreate, and a podcast percreateer. Combining all that stuff into one place isn’t fair the goal; it’s the whole point. And it’s very difficult to do all of those skinnygs well.

Personassociate, the most eye-uncovering moment in my time testing Surf has been the way the app lets you automaticassociate filter a feed. I set up a feed that’s fair all my likeite stuff: my go-to podcasts, must-read blogs, a couple of can’t-miss YouTube channels, and my likeite folks on Bluesky. I can uncover that feed and see everyskinnyg, in order, no matter what it is or who it came from. But I can also filter it to fair show all the videos in the feed or tap on “Listen” to turn it into a podcast queue. 

Surf isn’t yet a brimming-featured app for any of these uses, much less all of them, but it’s already a pretty advantageous app for all benevolents of media. It currents videos appreciate an finishlessly scrolling TikTok feed, which is actuassociate a pretty fun way to flip thraw a YouTube channel. Posts with connects are createatted appreciate news stories, with huge images and headlines. It’s not a particularly dense timeline-scrolling experience, either — the whole skinnyg is more appreciate Flipboard’s flippy magazines than the For You pages we’re used to.

Because it’s trying to compile a bunch of disparate platcreates into one, search can be disorderly — I set up five profiles with my name and picture, for instance, and it’s not clear which one is the one you’re watching for. Surf is also arrangeed to be interdynamic, but right now, that pretty much only toils if you’re a Mastodon user liking Mastodon posts. For most other skinnygs, it’s either benevolent of broken or enticount on broken. For now, and probably for a while, Surf is going to be much better as a consumption tool than a social one.

McCue sees the social web as the commencening of an enticount on new internet. He even uses ageder-web metaphors to elucidate these punctual products: the current era we’re in is appreciate AOL back in the day, “a walled garden that holded all the innovation in the walled garden”; Surf is appreciate ageder-school Yahoo, “a accumulateion of feeds that other people have made.” He wants to assist phelp feeds, so beginers, creators, and curators can originate money on the platcreate. He has huge ideas about custom arranges for feeds, so they can watch more appreciate homepages. 

There’s an terrible lot left to originate — not to refer a lot of protocols and tools left to guarantee all the internet’s platcreates and beginers to toil with. But I’ve been talking to McCue about this for two years now, and his conviction and chooseimism haven’t wavered a bit. When I alert him that I definitely wavered — that I was once all in on ActivityPub as the future but am worried seeing Bluesky lengthen on another protocol and hearing some of the rerents Threads and others are having with ActivityPub — he fair giggles. One, he says, that’s how it always goes in these punctual phases. Two, that’s what Surf is uncomardentt to mend.

To show his point, McCue uncovers up a feed brimming of basketball greeted, originated by David Rushing. Rushing was a huge figure in punctual NBA Threads, a community that has splintered thanks to some of Threads’ moderation and community policies. Now, people are posting with #nbathreads on Bluesky and elsewhere, too. It’s disorderly. But Surf, McCue says, can convey it back together. He commences scrolling Rushing’s custom feed: “You’re seeing Bluesky posts, Mastodon posts, Threads posts, Flipboard posts, anyskinnyg with the hashtag #nbathreads atraverse the whole social web. If you post a podcast, if you post a YouTube video, anyskinnyg with the hashtag #nbathreads, it’ll show up in this feed.” Rushing can insert or delete individual posts or even use Flipboard’s filtering systems to get rid of anyskinnyg that senses political, refers wagering, or wantipathyver else he wants to do. 

McCue is pragmaticly giddy as he scrolls thraw all this basketball greeted. This is the whole skinnyg, right here. “Ultimately,” he says, “you’re fair not going to attfinish whether someskinnyg is on Threads — I don’t write you a split benevolent of email because you’re on Gmail, right?” People will use lots of apps, there will be lots of communities, and that’s excellent. “There are nerds on Bluesky, there are nerds on Threads. How can all the nerds assemble together?” That’s the ask for the fediverse — sorry, the social web — and Surf watchs appreciate it might be the best answer anyone’s come up with so far.