Surf demonstrates the power of the open social web

My friends at Flipboard launched Surf, its open social web browser, on the web today.

I’ve been using Surf for a while. It’s a kind of browser for the open social web: a way to bring together all of your social feeds (Bluesky, Mastodon, RSS, YouTube) in one place and read them together. You can get an all-in-one feed, but anyone can create a curated feed for a specific topic.

For example, here’s my Speaking Truth to Power feed, which I’ve curated to highlight reporting shared by non-profit newsrooms covering the US. I also have a companion Speaking Truth to Tech Power feed, which specifically highlights tech stories that go a little bit deeper and explore the power dynamics technology can enforce.

For media companies, it’s even more interesting. The feed for Decoder, the podcast from The Verge, lets you listen to every Decoder episode. But if you click through to the other tabs, you’ll also find posts from sources and topics that the Verge thinks are interesting, and any discussion about the show that uses the #decoder hashtag. You can also click to see the sources that the Verge used to make the feed, which allows you to remix and make your own.

Beyond Decoder and The Verge, there are a whole host of other publications already creating feeds in Surf. I’m aware of (deep breath): WIRED, Rolling Stone Politics, 404 Media, Shutdown Fullcast, The MMQB, Defector: Sports!, All Net, FilmFeed, and The Oregonian, but more will follow. These are media properties that have chosen to create their own feeds with Surf, but it’s important to understand that they’ve also made the conscious choice to join the open social web.

This kind of functionality is only possible on an open social web: a place where all content can be brought together using open protocols to create new kinds of community experiences. It’s genuinely exciting to me. Surf is a first-class consumer web service, but it’s also one of the first to show what the unique value of the open social web can truly be for publishers. Any publication can now showcase its own posts across platforms together, with the social proof of conversation from other people who are talking about its work, together with media from other, relevant companies. And they can do it without asking anyone for permission.

And this openness goes both ways. As well as content from the open social web flowing into Surf, feeds made with Surf integrate with Bluesky, so you can follow the curated posts there, too. For example, here’s Speaking Truth to Power and its tech equivalent over there. This openness also demonstrates that publishers aren’t locked into Surf itself, and you can easily imagine more developers integrating with these feeds and creating other interesting experiences around them.

In short, I think this is great: a tool that shows (not tells) what the open social web makes possible, creates new value for publishers in the process, and does it through a first-class experience. More like this, please.

You can sign up for Surf at surf.social.