A new application called Tapestrywhich began on Tuesday, gathers and organizes information from all over the web and social networks in just one place. It is, in a way, as a generation friend, for those older enough to remember the previous attempt at Web 2.0 ERA to gather the feed and updates of social media into a single destination for discovery and discussion.
But while friendfeed encouraged discussions on the spot, creating his own social network-and finally attracting an acquisition from Facebook-Tapestry works better as a reader.
The problem that app’s addresses is what is becoming increasingly common as the open social fabric is increasing: to maintain them, people need to use tones of services and make so many app-switching.
Within a growth turbulence that includes developing Bluesky and Mastodon social networks, designed to compete with technological giants with open source software and decentralized power structures, there is also a challenge to maintain with friends and fans who have now been scattered in many places after leaving X and META platforms.
Treating this problem is Tapestry’s main draw, but this could also, at present, limit the appeal of implementation beyond the multitude of early adopted.
A consolidated application
Today, most people already have processes, work flows and preferred applications that they use to keep up with news, blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos from favorite creators. Tapestry suggests change this. It offers only one place to check for these updates alongside those from other social networks you can use, such as Bluesky, Mastodon, Tumblr and others.
Built by the team designed one of the original third -party Twitter customers, Twitterrific, Tapestry proposes to introduce a new type of timetable, such as Twitter, where all updates move. There are also more advanced tools that you can use to configure this timetable – such as choosing the content to erase and which one to “muffle”, or collapse – so you can choose to see it if you want to limit the space of the screen.
The latter can be used to improve both the aesthetics and the atmosphere of your timetable. For example, you may want to muffle political issues so as not to flood your screen as you move or muffle spoilers from your favorite TV shows.
After adding social accounts, RSS flows, blogs, podcasts and much more you want to see in Tapestry, you can then set your timetable, as well as additional timetables, offering a customized view of this information. For example, you could have a timetable that focuses only on Apple’s news, blogs and podcasts or one for your social networks, such as Bluesky and Mastodon.
To get the best use from Tapestry, you need to think about the type of information and updates you want to watch and how you would like to see them organized. Viewing all in one flow can be noisy due to all social applications. Your timetables are essentially the version of custom supply of Tapestry (similar to Bluesky foods, but with the ability to draw multiple services, not just one). This means that you will be in the work of the creator of feed, not just consumer – at least until a more powerful ecosystem of developers arrive.
Feeds and fasteners
While it feels that the upholstery is trying to chart an itch that the early social online adopters can have, the gathering of all your content in timetables may feel overwhelming at times and some of the user interface options need more varnishes.
For example, Tapestry is default to open supply in application when selecting the option to “open the original” from the “More” menu (three -point) in individual posts.
Also, removing the ability to deal with the original content with an additional fountain does not make this better application for people who wish quickly to participate in social conversations as they move. If you open the In-App items, you will need to log in to the social network to join. You probably want to set this to open the feeds on “Safari”, so Tapestry directly opens the iOS application (such as bluesky) where you can like, answer or repeat.
Unfortunately, this means that Tapestry does not really solve the need to keep multiple accounts in multiple applications.
Another design option that could be confusing includes the two sections of the app where you can add sources. One is called “feeds” and the other is called “fasteners”. The first allows you to add “content that appears on your schedule”, and the latter is intended to “create feeds that complement your schedule”. (If you scrape your head to these descriptions you are not alone. The application should provide more explanations.)
As it turns out, fasteners are intended to function more as a plug-ins or additives. They run on a Javascript sandbox and will be constructed by a community Third party developers They want to extend the wallpaper ecosystem with new foods of their own. Unfortunately, these fasteners cannot include sources such as Facebook, Instagram, X or others that do not offer open flows.
An expandable application is a smart idea, but the one that could be pushed below the project’s path map. Initially, the group must focus on testing the condition that users want To see information from all over the web, not just social fabric, as “timetables” in the first place. Make users want RSS, podcasts, social media and other mixed services instead of using separate applications?
A transitional step or the future?
Tapestry is not the only thing she is thinking of putting users in controlling their power supply and sources for news and information.
Newer social applications such as Bluesky and even META issues have introduced the concept of custom supplies, while newly established companies such as Graze offer advanced feeding tools and flipboard introduced a new application called Surf to build customized supplies by all the services. Unlike the Tapestry User Environment, Surf allows you to see foods that can be filtered to be viewed in different forms – to watch, read or hear – or you can choose to see everything in combination in one, accordingly with the tab you choose.
Other applications such as Feeeed and Reeder have also arisen to address such issues around the consumption of feed.
One problem these solutions are aimed at addressing is that today’s open social networks operate in different protocols. Mastodon, Pixelfed and others use Activityand bluesky and a growing number of customers are based on its underlying protocol, In the protocol. Meanwhile, older news sites, blogs and podcasts distribute their updates across the Open protocol RSS.
Currently, bridges are being created to connect networks such as Bluesky and Mastodon, social applications such as yarns are integrated into ActivityPub, while blogs and newsletters such as Ghost work to participate in the open social fabric known as Fediverse, through ActivityPub.
This leaves us in a transitional period where you can’t just choose your preferred app and wait to see them all.
Instead, we are given tools to combine foods and sources, however, we consider it appropriate. But some of these efforts feel temporary measures as a new, lighter internet – where everything is finally connected – are still being manufactured.
