Surf is Surf, the new Flipboard app for browsing the Open Social Web, making it easier for people to create their own custom feeds that focus on their interests and discover them. Instead of getting stuck in an algorithmically generated timeline designed by the owner of a social network, custom feeds allow you to build experiences that focus on what you actually care about, such as your favorite hobby, sports, community, or other topics.
With the introduction of the starter set on Thursday, Surf simplifies the process of building, personalizing these custom feeds and publishing the platform off if selected.
By making feed creation easier, more people can control their social media experiences and reduce feed control from high-tech giants like Meta and Google. Startups like Graze and SkyFeed already allow BlueSky users to create their own custom feeds, but these tools are designed with more technical users in mind and are not necessarily mainstream social media consumers.
The starter set, on the other hand, is aimed at people who want to try their hand in feed building but don’t know how to start.
Released in an invitation-only beta late last year, Surf is Phase 2 of Flipboard’s original mission, curating the web. The company’s flagship flipboard app allowed people to collect and organize posts from blogs, news websites and mainstream social media services that have become custom magazines. However, once social services (such as X) locked down their APIs and restricted access to content, Flipboard instead turned to the open social web. It ultimately led to the creation of a new app with surfing.
Surf allows you to curate and explore feeds that contain content from social networks built on open protocols, such as Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed, Peertube, and more, including Meta’s latest apps, threads, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, news sites, and those with RSS feeds.
The new set of starters created by the team is organized around popular categories and pre-populated with recommended sources.
For example, if you choose to start a “Hobby” feed, you can tap on that category and then look for sources to add to many subtopics, such as cycling, games, LEGO, books, baking, hiking, dance, guitar, comics, sailing, and more.
Additionally, you can add your own social account feeds from either Mastodon or Bluesky to filter by topic of your choice. You can also use the search bar to add your own specific sources and filter those sources using additional tools to include only posts that match the topic in your feed. (For example, if your favorite Tech Pundit is also actively posting about politics, this is useful, but you just want to track what they have to say about Tech.)
Another new feature allows you to publish your custom feed to BlueSky.
To do this, tap the 3-dot menu in the feed header, then tap Publish to Bluesky and Feed will appear in the feed tab in your BlueSky profile. (This feed contains Bluesky content only when viewed in the BlueSky app.)
Surf is still only invited, but I will add it regularly from the waitlist.