{"id":138589,"date":"2024-12-19T00:39:53","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T17:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=138589"},"modified":"2024-12-19T00:39:53","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T17:39:53","slug":"flipboards-surf-app-is-a-feed-reader-for-the-fediverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=138589","title":{"rendered":"Flipboard\u2019s Surf app is a feed reader for the fediverse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Mike McCue, the CEO of Flipboard and an internet entrepreneur since the Netscape days, is a true believer in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/24063290\/fediverse-explained-activitypub-social-media-open-protocol\">the fediverse<\/a>. He doesn\u2019t love the word: he\u2019d much rather call it \u201cthe social web.\u201d But whatever you want to call the open, decentralized, interconnected social networking experience that apps like Mastodon and Bluesky promise, McCue is absolutely convinced it\u2019s the future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">For the last year or so, McCue and his team have been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2023\/12\/18\/24006062\/flipboard-fediverse-mastodon-activitypub-profiles-social\">completely overhauling the Flipboard platform<\/a> to make it a part of the social web. Once the change is done, Flipboard will be a fully decentralized way to discover and read stuff from across the internet. The process seems to be going fine, though it doesn\u2019t seem poised to take over the fediverse the way Threads could if it fully opened up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">At the same time, though, the Flipboard team has been working on something even bigger. That something is an app called <a href=\"https:\/\/about.surf.social\/\">Surf<\/a> (not to be confused with the other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2024\/12\/4\/24312449\/deta-surf-ai-browser\">recently launched Surf<\/a>), which McCue called \u201cthe world\u2019s first browser for the social web.\u201d He first said that to me a little over a year ago, when Surf was mostly just a bunch of mock-ups and a slide deck. Now, the app has been in beta for the last few months \u2014 I\u2019ve been using it most of that time \u2014 and a public beta is launching today. Not everyone can get in; McCue says he wants to bring in some curators and creators first, in order for there to be lots of stuff in Surf when everyone else gets access. And he promises that\u2019s coming soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">But wait, sorry, back to the whole \u201cbrowser for the social web\u201d thing. McCue\u2019s best explanation of Surf\u2019s big theory is this: in a decentralized social world, the internet will be less about websites and more about feeds. \u201cYou won\u2019t put in, like, theverge.com and go to the website for <em>The Verge<\/em>, but you can put in \u2018the verge\u2019 and go to the ActivityPub feed for <em>The Verge<\/em>.\u201d Your Threads timeline is a feed; every Bluesky Starter Pack is a feed; every creator you follow is just producing a feed of content.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Surf\u2019s job, in that world, is to help you discover and explore all those feeds. The app can see three kinds of feeds: anything from ActivityPub, which means things like Mastodon and Threads and Pixelfed; anything from AT Protocol, which means Bluesky; and any RSS feed. You can search for feeds by topic, publisher, or creator; you can curate your own feeds by combining other feeds. And then you can share those feeds, which other people can combine and recombine. It\u2019s all a little confusing. Just imagine a nicely designed, vertically scrolling feed, somewhere between a Twitter timeline and the Apple News<em> <\/em>homepage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component clear-both block\">\n<div class=\"my-9\">\n<p><figcaption class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup inline text-gray-13 dark:text-gray-e9 [&amp;&gt;a:hover]:text-black [&amp;&gt;a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;&gt;a:hover]:text-gray-e9 dark:[&amp;&gt;a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&amp;&gt;a]:shadow-underline-gray-13 dark:[&amp;&gt;a]:shadow-underline-gray-63\"><em>You can have any kind of content in Surf \u2014 which means the app has to be good at absolutely everything.<\/em><\/figcaption><cite class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup inline not-italic text-gray-63 dark:text-gray-bd [&amp;&gt;a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&amp;&gt;a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;&gt;a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&amp;&gt;a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&amp;&gt;a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&amp;&gt;a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&amp;&gt;a]:shadow-underline-gray\">Image: David Pierce \/ Surf<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">A feed can be made up of almost any kind of content, which presents a tricky design problem for Surf. It has to be equally adept as a social network, a news app, a video platform, and a podcast player. Combining all that stuff into one place isn\u2019t just the goal; it\u2019s the whole point. And it\u2019s very hard to do all of those things well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Personally, the most eye-opening moment in my time testing Surf has been the way the app lets you automatically filter a feed. I set up a feed that\u2019s just all my favorite stuff: my go-to podcasts, must-read blogs, a couple of can\u2019t-miss YouTube channels, and my favorite folks on Bluesky. I can open that feed and see everything, in order, no matter what it is or who it came from. But I can also filter it to just show all the videos in the feed or tap on \u201cListen\u201d to turn it into a podcast queue.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Surf isn\u2019t yet a full-featured app for any of these uses, much less all of them, but it\u2019s already a pretty useful app for all kinds of media. It presents videos like an endlessly scrolling TikTok feed, which is actually a pretty fun way to flip through a YouTube channel. Posts with links are formatted like news stories, with big images and headlines. It\u2019s not a particularly dense timeline-scrolling experience, either \u2014\u00a0the whole thing is more like Flipboard\u2019s flippy magazines than the For You pages we\u2019re used to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Because it\u2019s trying to compile a bunch of disparate platforms into one, search can be messy \u2014\u00a0I found five profiles with my name and picture, for instance, and it\u2019s not obvious which one is the one you\u2019re looking for. Surf is also designed to be interactive, but right now, that pretty much only works if you\u2019re a Mastodon user liking Mastodon posts. For most other things, it\u2019s either kind of broken or entirely broken. For now, and probably for a while, Surf is going to be much better as a consumption tool than a social one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">McCue sees the social web as the beginning of an entirely new internet. He even uses old-web metaphors to explain these early products: the current era we\u2019re in is like AOL back in the day, \u201ca walled garden that contained all the innovation in the walled garden\u201d; Surf is like old-school Yahoo, \u201ca collection of feeds that other people have made.\u201d He wants to enable paid feeds, so publishers, creators, and curators can make money on the platform. He has big ideas about custom designs for feeds, so they can look more like homepages.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">There\u2019s an awful lot left to build \u2014\u00a0not to mention a lot of protocols and tools left to convince all the internet\u2019s platforms and publishers to work with. But I\u2019ve been talking to McCue about this for two years now, and his conviction and optimism haven\u2019t wavered a bit. When I tell him that I definitely wavered \u2014 that I was once all in on ActivityPub as the future but am worried seeing Bluesky grow on another protocol and hearing some of the issues Threads and others are having with ActivityPub \u2014 he just laughs. One, he says, that\u2019s how it always goes in these early phases. Two, that\u2019s what Surf is meant to fix.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">To prove his point, McCue opens up a feed full of basketball content, created by David Rushing. Rushing was a big figure in early NBA Threads, a community that has splintered thanks to some of Threads\u2019 moderation and community policies. Now, people are posting with #nbathreads on Bluesky and elsewhere, too. It\u2019s messy. But Surf, McCue says, can bring it back together. He starts scrolling Rushing\u2019s custom feed: \u201cYou\u2019re seeing Bluesky posts, Mastodon posts, Threads posts, Flipboard posts, anything with the hashtag #nbathreads across the whole social web. If you post a podcast, if you post a YouTube video, anything with the hashtag #nbathreads, it\u2019ll show up in this feed.\u201d Rushing can add or remove individual posts or even use Flipboard\u2019s filtering systems to get rid of anything that feels political, mentions gambling, or whatever else he wants to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">McCue is practically giddy as he scrolls through all this basketball content. This is the whole thing, right here. \u201cUltimately,\u201d he says, \u201cyou\u2019re just not going to care whether something is on Threads \u2014\u00a0I don\u2019t write you a separate kind of email because you\u2019re on Gmail, right?\u201d People will use lots of apps, there will be lots of communities, and that\u2019s good. \u201cThere are nerds on Bluesky, there are nerds on Threads. How can all the nerds gather together?\u201d That\u2019s the question for the fediverse \u2014 sorry, the social web \u2014 and Surf looks like it might be the best answer anyone\u2019s come up with so far.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1660802\">\r\n<\/div>\r\n<script>(function(w,q){w[q]=w[q]||[];w[q].push([\"_mgc.load\"])})(window,\"_mgq\");\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2024\/12\/18\/24323903\/flipboard-surf-fediverse-social-web-app\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike McCue, the CEO of Flipboard and an internet entrepreneur since the Netscape days, is a true believer in the fediverse. He doesn\u2019t love the word: he\u2019d much rather call &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=138589\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8630],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}