Surf, the brand new app from Flipboard for searching the open social internet, is making it simpler for folks to create and uncover their very own customized feeds targeted on their pursuits. As an alternative of getting caught in an algorithmically generated timeline designed by a social community’s proprietor, customized feeds can help you construct an expertise targeted on belongings you truly care about, like your favourite hobbies, sports activities, communities, or another subjects you need to observe.
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, however, are aimed toward anybody who needs to attempt their hand at feed-building however isn’t certain the way to start.
Launched late final 12 months into an invite-only beta, Surf is part two of Flipboard’s authentic mission to curate the net. The corporate’s flagship Flipboard app had allowed folks to gather and arrange posts from blogs, information web sites, and mainstream social media providers, which had 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 an alternative. That in the end led to the creation of a brand new app, with Surf.
Surf allow you to curate and discover feeds that embody 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 crew, are organized round widespread classes and pre-populated with really helpful sources.
As an example, should you select to start out a “Hobbies” feed, you possibly can faucet on that class after which search for sources so as to add throughout numerous subtopics, like biking, gaming, Lego, books, baking, mountain climbing, dancing, guitar, comics, crusing, and way more.
Plus, you possibly can add your personal social account feed from both Mastodon or Bluesky and have it filtered by the chosen subject. You too can use the search bar so as to add particular sources of your personal, then use extra instruments to filter these sources so that they’ll solely embody posts that match the feed’s subject. (This could possibly be useful in case your favourite tech pundit additionally actively posts about politics, for instance, however you solely need to monitor 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 embody Bluesky content material when seen on Bluesky’s app, nevertheless.)
Surf continues to be invite-only however usually provides from its waitlist.
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