The Flipboard magazine app joins the Fediverse – the group of interconnected servers powering a range of open-source decentralized apps, including popular new Twitter alternative Mastodon. Starting today, the Flipboard app for iOS will include a beta feature that will allow Mastodon users to visually scroll through their timeline to view posts from people they follow, much like they were able to with Twitter. . But the company’s Fediverse ambitions go beyond a product integration as Flipboard is launching its own Mastodon instance, flipboard.social, to provide an easy way for Flipboard users and magazine curators to participate in the decentralized web. It also plans to support ActivityPub, the underlying protocol that powers Mastodon and other federated apps.
Access to the new instance, for now, will be limited to invite-only Flipboard curators. But Flipboard says that over time it aims to onboard more users into Fediverse through its instance.
The news follows a similar announcement from blogging platform Medium, which last month launched its own Mastodon community for its authors. Other companies reviewing Fediverse integrations include Tumblr and Flickr, both of which have discussed adding support for ActivityPub.
For Flipboard, the new Mastodon integration serves to fill a potential hole in its service. The company understands its longstanding Twitter integration could become unreliable with Twitter’s API changes under Elon Musk, which have already impacted a range of third-party apps, including many Twitter clients. Flipboard, which started life as a social magazine where users could read their news feeds alongside updates from social apps like Twitter, knows its time with Twitter may now be limited.
“We don’t know how long this will stay alive,” Flipboard CEO Mike McCue said of the app’s Twitter integration.
He says the company no longer has contact on Twitter in the event of an API issue, although it has yet to experience a major disruption. Still, he says, what happens next is “everyone’s guess.”
By integrating with Mastodon, Flipboard users will be able to continue browsing a feed of short updates from the people they follow in the Flipboard app. This includes Mastodon posts with text, images, and link previews, just like Twitter offered. They can also use the integration to compose their own Mastodon posts with links and photo uploads of their own. Additionally, they can reply, like and boost others’ posts, and click on hashtags to follow broader topical discussions, among other things.
Flipboard curators can also “flip” (add) Mastodon posts to their magazines using the plus button, much like they were able to do with Twitter before. And Flipboard’s new Notes feature, which allows curators to include original content in their magazine, can be turned into Mastodon text messages.
Although it’s not a full client – like apps like Ivory, Mammoth or Ice Cubes are – Flipboard offers an easy way to follow your Mastodon community alongside other news and stories.
But Flipboard’s Fediverse ambitions go beyond a Masoton integration. McCue believes in the potential of Fediverse to reshape the web, where power today is centralized among a few large technology platforms.
“The really powerful thing about ActivityPub [the protocol powering the Fediverse] is this a W3 standard. It’s not related to cryptography, it’s not related to encryption – it’s really trying to solve a problem, which is just a common social graph and a common namespace that people can use to be efficiently in a Open social web,” he says. “This opportunity is the most exciting thing I’ve seen since the early days of the web. I really think it’s a big deal,” adds McCue.
Until now, companies like Facebook (Meta) have owned the social graph, but ActivityPub’s promise is a way to build a variety of services across this new social layer. Right now, McCue points out, we’re seeing a lot of clones of existing apps emerging, like Mastodon, a Twitter clone, or PixelFed, a federated Instagram clone, for example. But over time, he believes, other services will materialize and grow.
Flipboard is among those exploring how best to adopt ActivityPub as a core capability for its social layer. This will ultimately allow users of Mastodon and other federated apps to follow Flipboard’s curators and magazines in their feeds, while also allowing Flipboard users to follow users and feeds of other services, such as Mastodon, PixelFed and PeerTube.
Picture credits: Flipboard
The company is also investing directly in Fediverse by opening its own Mastodon instance on flipboard.social. The CEO describes the instance as “a high-quality, scalable instance that will be highly moderated, fast, secure, and reliable.” The company’s own moderation team, now consisting of seven people, will be responsible for moderating the instance in addition to its existing duties.
Today, Flipboard will begin inviting its top curators to join, but anyone can join its waitlist on the flipboard.social website. Initially, the instance will open to a few hundred, but will grow to single-digit thousands and then tens of thousands over time at a slow and steady pace. The instance, which runs on Flipboard’s own infrastructure, will be subsidized by the company’s existing revenue, but McCue believes a business model for the Fediverse will emerge that will allow companies to sustain themselves, engage in moderation and evolve.
“I think at some point it will have to be understood, but I think it’s the kind of thing to do collectively with people who are in the Fediverse,” he says.
Flipboard’s addition to the Fediverse has the potential to add a good number of users if its community chooses to embrace this new frontier. The company previously said it has “millions” of magazines on its app, although only 25% to 50% of that figure is active in any given month. It also claims 100 million monthly active users, but that figure includes its newsletter subscribers, not just its app users, so it’s not an accurate picture of the number of active contributors. Still, even if a small percentage joined the Fediverse from the Flipboard community, it could be a big boost for the decentralized web which now boasts around 2.56 million monthly active users.
The latest version of Flipboard for iPhone will now include Mastodon functionality and the waitlist for the instance is live today at flipboard.social.
