Surf, the new app from Flipboard for browsing the open social web, is increasing its help for Bluesky’s social community. On Monday, the corporate introduced a brand new model of its beta software program (dubbed “Blue Wave”) which permits customers to log into the app utilizing their Bluesky credentials after which see all their Bluesky feeds in Surf, together with their following feed, uncover feed, and any of the customized feeds they’ve pinned within the Bluesky app.
The brand new integration may also enable customers to entry different Bluesky sources when constructing their very own customized feeds — like Bluesky’s Starter Packs, that are lists of beneficial followers that individuals construct to assist new customers discover connections. Different Bluesky sources, like Lists and Customized Feeds, are additionally out there as sources.
With the addition, Surf turns into an alternative choice to utilizing the Bluesky app itself, as you’re capable of work together with posts from Bluesky’s community by liking, replying to, and reposting them, whereas likes and replies from customers on Bluesky’s app additionally show in Surf.
Explains Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, Surf provides you “seamless entry” to anybody posting on Bluesky, Mastodon or Threads.
“It’s the social net coming to life and unifying the social net,” he says.
Plus, he sees apps like Surf as a great various to centralized social media, which is changing into stuffed with AI-generated content material.
“The AI overrun is simply brutal,” he says. “For this reason I actually suppose RSS is so vital as a result of it provides you entry to all the most effective YouTube content material, podcasts and newsletters from actual folks. By being express in regards to the sources that you simply select, and taking a look at folks that you simply belief and what sources they’ve beneficial, it’s the ability of human connection to assist filter away all of the AI slop,” McCue notes.
One other new beta characteristic is a setup wizard that may information you thru the method of making your individual customized dwelling feed in Surf — one thing the corporate goals so as to add to different customized feed creation instruments additional down the street.
Right here, you may design your individual common timeline of types, by combining feeds from Mastodon and Bluesky, together with your following feeds or different customized feeds, like Bluesky’s “Standard with Mates” or “Uncover.”
The setup wizard may also allow you to filter out content material you don’t wish to see in these feeds, like politics. There are even toggle switches to cover posts about Donald Trump or Elon Musk, in case you’d desire a extra escapist feed.
“Lots of people I’ve personally spoken with are like…I take advantage of Bluesky to get away from the information. And I don’t wish to examine Elon. I don’t wish to hear any politics,” McCue explains.
The place Surf already shines is its capacity that can assist you construct your individual topical feeds that mix posts from throughout open social networks and different open protocols like RSS. The latter permits you to add sources like information web sites, blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels to your customized feeds.
For instance, one among McCue’s feeds, “Tech Builders and Thinkers,” contains people whose accounts are on Mastodon, Bluesky, and YouTube.
The concept is to comply with the folks and the subjects you’re focused on, with out limiting your self to a single platform.
For now, all feeds are public by default, permitting customers to comply with feeds that others have constructed. In time, nevertheless, McCue says your feeds might be non-public so you may choose and select which of them you wish to share extra broadly.
You can too tweak the design and format of the feeds you construct, setting their cowl picture and background shade, in addition to selecting which tab is their default.
You possibly can have feeds that look extra like a Twitter/X timeline by setting them to the “Talk about” view, or in case you’d quite have them centered on pictures, audio, movies, or articles, you may select different views, like “Look,” “Hear,” “Watch,” or “Learn,” respectively.
Immediately, a lot of developers are building TikTok-like or Instagram-like apps for Bluesky, which change the way you view Bluesky’s content material by specializing in a selected sort of media. With Surf, you may get the identical outcomes with out the necessity for a separate app and with out limiting your self to solely Bluesky content material.
The Surf Blue Wave beta replace was first demonstrated on the SXSW convention in Austin, Texas, and can roll out to present testers. The corporate may also be letting in a brand new wave of beta testers with this launch. Surf will later exit Apple’s TestFlight testing platform so the app can attain past the restrict of 10,000 testers that Apple imposes.
The corporate can be engaged on bringing the at present iOS-only Surf app to the net.
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