Surf, the brand new app from Flipboard for looking the open social internet, is making it simpler for folks to create and uncover their very own customized feeds centered on their pursuits. As a substitute of getting caught in an algorithmically generated timeline designed by a social community’s proprietor, customized feeds mean you can construct an expertise centered on stuff you really care about, like your favourite hobbies, sports activities, communities, or some other subjects you need to comply with.
With Thursday’s introduction of Starter Units, Surf is simplifying the method of constructing these customized feeds, personalizing them, and even publishing them off-platform, should you select.
Making feed creation simpler permits extra folks to take management of their social media expertise and wrest management of their feeds again from tech giants like Meta and Google. Startups like Graze and SkyFeed already let Bluesky customers construct their very own customized feeds, however these instruments are designed with extra technical customers in thoughts, not essentially a mainstream social media client.
Starter Units, then again, are aimed toward anybody who desires to strive their hand at feed-building however isn’t positive methods to start.
Launched late final yr into an invite-only beta, Surf is part two of Flipboard’s unique mission to curate the online. The corporate’s flagship Flipboard app had allowed folks to gather and set up posts from blogs, information web sites, and mainstream social media providers, which had been become customized magazines. However as social providers (like X) locked down their APIs, limiting entry to their content material, Flipboard appeared to the open social internet as a substitute. That in the end led to the creation of a brand new app, with Surf.
Surf allow you to curate and discover feeds that embrace the content material from social networks constructed on open protocols, like Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and others, together with Meta’s newest app, Threads, in addition to content material from blogs, podcasts, YouTube movies, information websites, or anything with an RSS feed.
The brand new Starter Units, created by its staff, are organized round in style classes and pre-populated with really helpful sources.
For example, should you select to start out a “Hobbies” feed, you’ll be able to faucet on that class after which search for sources so as to add throughout a variety of subtopics, like biking, gaming, Lego, books, baking, mountain climbing, dancing, guitar, comics, crusing, and rather more.
Plus, you’ll be able to add your personal social account feed from both Mastodon or Bluesky and have it filtered by the chosen subject. You may as well use the search bar so as to add particular sources of your personal, then use extra instruments to filter these sources in order that they’ll solely embrace posts that match the feed’s subject. (This may very well be useful in case your favourite tech pundit additionally actively posts about politics, for instance, however you solely need to observe what they must say about tech.)
One other newer characteristic allows you to publish your customized feed to Bluesky.
To take action, faucet the three-dot menu on the feed’s header, then faucet “Publish to Bluesky,” and the feed will seem within the Feeds tab of your Bluesky profile. (This feed will solely embrace Bluesky content material when considered on Bluesky’s app, nonetheless.)
Surf continues to be invite-only however commonly provides from its waitlist.