Surf, the new app from Flipboard for shopping the open social internet, is making it simpler for folks to create and uncover their very own customized feeds centered on their pursuits. As an alternative of getting caught in an algorithmically generated timeline designed by a social community’s proprietor, customized feeds assist you to construct an expertise centered on stuff you truly care about, like your favourite hobbies, sports activities, communities, or another subjects you wish 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 case 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, alternatively, are geared toward anybody who desires to attempt their hand at feed-building however isn’t positive the right way to start.
Launched late final yr into an invite-only beta, Surf is part two of Flipboard’s unique mission to curate the net. 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 have been became customized magazines. However as social providers (like X) locked down their APIs, limiting entry to their content material, Flipboard regarded 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 the rest with an RSS feed.
The brand new Starter Units, created by its crew, are organized round common classes and pre-populated with really helpful sources.
For example, in case 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 quite a few subtopics, like biking, gaming, Lego, books, baking, mountain climbing, 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 subject. It’s also possible to use the search bar so as to add particular sources of your individual, then use extra instruments to filter these sources in order that they’ll solely embrace posts that match the feed’s subject. (This might be helpful in case your favourite tech pundit additionally actively posts about politics, for instance, however you solely wish to observe what they need to say about tech.)
One other newer characteristic helps 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 frequently provides from its waitlist.
