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Software company Flipboard is set to unveil an app next year called Surf that connects platforms across the fediverse (the open, social web that Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and others are a part of) in customizable and interactive feeds.
The Big Picture: Fediverse CEO Mike McCue is betting that the future of social media will not be about walled-garden platforms and websites but instead revolve around agnostic, searchable, and scrollable feeds of your favorite creators and publishers that combine everything they post across the internet.
Behind the Profiles: Surf, which is already in public beta, wants to be “the world’s first browser for the social web.”
- Surf culls together feeds from three sources: ActivityPub (such as Mastodon and Threads), AT Protocol (Bluesky), and any RSS feed (Reddit).
- Users can search for these vertical-scrolling feeds by creator or publisher, customize feeds by combining those from different creators, and share those feeds with others.
- The feeds include text, images, video, and podcasts. Users can filter the feeds only to show one or more specific types of media.
- In the future, Surf plans to make the design of feeds customizable and will also roll out feed-monetization programs.
The Future: The Verge notes that Surf still has a long way to go — the app is still not fully functional in every aspect, and the public beta is not entirely public (it’s geared toward getting known online curators and creators onboarded first), but the potential is exciting. In a Surf-first internet, where people post will no longer matter — all that matters is the what. For those who already know what they’re looking for, Surf could be a seminal tool… leaving algorithmic discovery to the individual platforms themselves.
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