Flipboard just launched Surf, which is a bit like an RSS feed for the open social web

The company behind the news app Flipboard which is kind of like RSS feed for the open social network. The app allows users to create feeds pulled from the open social network, including services like Mastodon and Bluesky. It also sources content from blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos.

Flipboard CEO Mike Macco calls it a “social web browser” and that’s how it describes it . Surf supports a full range of open protocols, including RSS, Bluesky’s AT Protocol, and ActivityPub. The latter is used to power decentralized platforms such as Mastodon, Threads, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Friendica and others. This follows which allowed full interoperability with Mastodon and other decentralized networks.

The app has been in development for nearly two years and allows users to create custom feeds using a range of sources. If you want to follow a niche topic like 3D printing, you can add notable people to the feed, along with hashtags, specific RSS feeds, favorite podcasts, and more. As of the initial beta, Surf comes with 30,000 pre-defined themes to explore. Custom feeds can also explore multiple topics at once to personalize things.

The app’s homepage includes a wide range of curated feeds you can follow that are organized into sections like Featured, Trending, Communities, and Expert Voices. Feeds can be configured in a number of ways, allowing users to include or exclude things like replies, reposts, or adult content. Fortunately, the feed order is also fully customizable, with an option for a Twitter-like timeline.

This sounds great doesn’t it? One of the major problems in this new era of social networking, where is the absence of a central axis. This seems to solve this problem to some extent.

Now a spot of bad news. Surf is technically available at the moment, but only as an invite-only closed beta. If you manage to get one of these invites, the app is available for both iOS and Android, with a desktop client coming soon.