Flipboard, a Web 2.0-era social magazine app reinventing itself to capitalize on the renewed push toward an open social web, is deepening its ties to fediverse, the social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon. Pixelfed, PeerTube and, over time, Instagram themes, among others. On Thursday, the company announced that it is expanding fediverse integrations to 400 more Flipboard creators and introducing fediverse notifications to the Flipboard app itself.
The latter will allow Flipboard users to see their new followers and other activity around content shared on the fediverse right in the Flipboard app. This follows last year’s introduction of a Mastodon integration into the app, which replaces Twitter, and the introduction of support for ActivityPub, the social networking protocol that powers the open source, decentralized social networks that include Mastodon and more.
In February, Flipboard announced that it would begin adding its creators and their social magazines to fediverse, meaning curated magazines with links and other social media posts that its creators typically share on the Flipboard app could now be found a wider audience. By sharing creators’ posts and links with the wider fed community, Flipboard’s publishing partners gained their own native ActivityPub feeds for Mastodon users and those on other fed social media to discover. This initial push toward federation started with 1,000 Flipboard magazines and today is adding another 400. In total, Flipboard says there are now over 11,000 curated Flipboard magazines available to federated social users.
“This is an important step toward fully federating our platform,” Flipboard CEO Mike McCue noted in a statement. “We’re not just making curated content visible on Flipboard, we’re enabling two-way communication so users can see activity and interact with different communities. Personally, it has made my curation even more exciting as I know it reaches new people who may share my interests.”
The expanded set of accounts includes public accounts with one or two public journals that have moderated activity in the last 30 days and have no trust and security violations. They have also participated in Flipboard community programs. Accounts will be notified of their federated status via email.
While Flipboard works to federate its users’ accounts by default, users will be able to “unfederate” by turning off the “Federate” button in their Flipboard settings.
In addition to recent fediverse magazines, Flipboard also brings a more comprehensive fediverse experience to its own app. With the release arriving on Thursday (version 4.3.25), Flipboard users will be able to see their new followers from the fediverse on their Flipboard profile, and their Flipboard notifications will now include different reactions and conversations.
This notification window will now contain three sections: Replies, Activity and News. In Replies, users will be able to see and reply to posts from people on both Flipboard and fediverse, as well as any other fediverse @mentions. When they respond, their response is also sent back to fediverse, making Flipboard more of a fediverse client app than before. The Activity tab, meanwhile, will show users likes, follows, and boosts (the fediverse’s take on a retweet), along with other activity on Flipboard. The News section (previously called Content) will now feature breaking news and other stories recommended by Flipboard’s editorial team.
The company had already started curating content for different users in a handful of “news offices” (dedicated fediverse accounts) that direct users to interesting articles and links between topics. There is a wider one News office, plus those dedicated to Tech, civilization and Science. This existing curation can help power the recently revamped News section of the Flipboard app.
