Surf, the new app from Flipboard for searching the open social net, is making it simpler for folks to create and uncover their very own customized feeds targeted 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 targeted on belongings you truly care about, like your favourite hobbies, sports activities, communities, or every other matters 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, in the event 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 build their own custom feeds, however these instruments are designed with extra technical customers in thoughts, not essentially a mainstream social media client.
Starter Units, alternatively, are geared toward anybody who desires to attempt their hand at feed-building however isn’t certain start.
Launched late last year into an invite-only beta, Surf is part two of Flipboard’s authentic mission to curate the online. The corporate’s flagship Flipboard app had allowed folks to gather and manage posts from blogs, information web sites, and mainstream social media companies, which had been was customized magazines. However as social companies (like X) locked down their APIs, limiting entry to their content material, Flipboard regarded to the open social net as a substitute. That finally led to the creation of a brand new app, with Surf.
Surf allows 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 flood 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 workforce, are organized round widespread classes and pre-populated with advisable sources.
For example, in the event 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 plenty of subtopics, like biking, gaming, Legos, books, baking, mountaineering, dancing, guitar, comics, crusing, and way more.
Plus, you’ll be able to add your individual social account feed from both Mastodon or Bluesky and have it filtered by the chosen matter. You may as well use the search bar so as to add particular sources of your individual, then use further instruments to filter these sources so that they’ll solely embrace posts that match the feed’s matter. (This might be helpful in case your favourite tech pundit additionally actively posts about politics, for instance, however you solely need to observe what they need to say about tech.)
One other newer function 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, nevertheless.)
Surf remains to be invite-only however commonly provides from its waitlist.