Flipboard, the popular magazine app, is expanding its investment in the Fediverse, the decentralized social media ecosystem that includes apps like Mastodon and others. The company has announced plans to establish its first editorial desks to curate news for the wider federated community. Initially, Flipboard will launch four desks — News, Tech, Culture, and Science — which will not be automated by bots but instead by professional curators who have expertise in discovering and elevating interesting content.
Flipboard has built an app that allows users to organize articles and updates, including those from social networks, into personalized magazines that can be shared with others. However, in recent times, the company has shifted its focus to embracing the open social web and the Fediverse. Flipboard has launched its own Mastodon server and plans to more deeply integrate with ActivityPub, the protocol powering a growing number of decentralized apps, including Mastodon.
Flipboard also added support for browsing Mastodon and engaging with its content in its magazine app, after Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk revoked API access for a range of third-party services, including Flipboard. This move has led Flipboard to turn towards Mastodon and to position its own server as a “highly moderated, fast, secure, and reliable” way for first-time Mastodon users to join the Fediverse.
Flipboard CEO Mike McCue stated that “While Twitter is enabling payment for some API access, the approach they’ve taken is prohibitively expensive, unreliable and frankly untrustworthy. I can’t imagine us or anyone else ever relying on Twitter again for anything.”
Flipboard has redirected the company away from Twitter and toward Mastodon, with its own server now having over 600 members. The company aims to slowly scale up its server to thousands of members over time.
Flipboard’s investment in the Fediverse shows a significant shift in the social media landscape towards decentralized and open-source platforms. The establishment of editorial desks to curate news for the wider federated community is a step towards a more democratic and decentralized approach to news curation, which could have far-reaching implications for the future of social media.
