Introduction to Surf

Surf, the latest app from Flipboard for browsing the open social web, is now making it simpler for users to create and discover personalized feeds that focus on their specific interests. Instead of being confined to an algorithmically generated timeline designed by a social network, users can build an experience centered around their favorite hobbies, sports, communities, or any other topics they wish to follow.

Simplifying Feed Creation

With the introduction of Starter Sets on Thursday, Surf is streamlining the process of creating custom feeds, personalizing them, and even publishing them off-platform if desired.

Empowering Users

By making feed creation more accessible, Surf enables more people to take control of their social media experience and reclaim their feeds from tech giants like Meta and Google. Although startups such as Graze and SkyFeed already allow Bluesky users to build custom feeds, these tools are generally designed for more technical users, not the average social media consumer.

Starter Sets for Mainstream Users

Starter Sets, on the other hand, are designed for anyone who wants to try building custom feeds but is unsure where to begin.

Background on Surf

Launched late last year into an invite-only beta, Surf represents phase two of Flipboard’s original mission to curate the web. Flipboard’s flagship app allowed users to collect and organize posts from blogs, news websites, and mainstream social media services into custom magazines. However, as social services like X locked down their APIs, limiting access to their content, Flipboard shifted its focus to the open social web, ultimately leading to the creation of Surf.

Features of Surf

Surf enables users to curate and explore feeds that include content from social networks built on open protocols like Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and others, including Meta’s latest app, Threads, as well as content from blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, news sites, or anything else with an RSS feed.

Utilizing Starter Sets

The new Starter Sets, created by Surf’s team, are organized around popular categories and pre-populated with recommended sources.

Customization Options

For instance, if you choose to start a “Hobbies” feed, you can tap on that category and then look for sources to add across a number of subtopics, like cycling, gaming, Legos, books, baking, hiking, dancing, guitar, comics, sailing, and much more.

Advanced Features

Plus, you can add your own social account feed from either Mastodon or Bluesky and have it filtered by the chosen topic. You can also use the search bar to add specific sources of your own, then use additional tools to filter those sources so they’ll only include posts that match the feed’s topic. (This could be handy if your favorite tech pundit also actively posts about politics, for example, but you only want to track what they have to say about tech.)

Publishing to