Today was a huge milestone in our quest to federate #Flipboard and tear down the walls around our own walled garden.
First, we launched a new version of Flipboard for iOS and Android which brings the promise of two way federation to life. Now when a federated Flipboard user curates, people in the fediverse can reply, favorite, boost or follow those Flipboard users who will in turn see that activity in their usual notifications tab. Even better, Flipboard users can directly reply to people in the fediverse -- and very soon they will also be able to follow each other.
Second, we federated some of our best curators today who are actively curating more than 10,000 magazines about everything from climate change to kale smoothie recipes. I'm grateful to our many curators and the service they provide to so many others who want to find the best content about a shared interest. I know our curators are excited to have millions more people who could potentially benefit from their curation. I also know that people in the fediverse will give a warm welcome to these curators. Especially now that everyone can hear and talk to each other over what was once two totally separate networks but now increasingly are in one and the same #fediverse.
@tchambers, author of the Twitter Migration report and admin of indieweb.social, is an internet steward everyone should know. In this podcast with @mike, Tim expounds on social media’s thorniest issues and explains how the Fediverse offers a better social home than anything we've had before.
Now that for-profit tech companies are beginning to implement #ActivityPub, I think it's important to establish what we want with the #fediverse and whether federation with #Threads, #Flipboard, Tumblr, and the like bring us closer to or further from those goals.
With that in mind, I've come up with a few statements (in no particular order) that describe what I think is an "ideal fediverse" — a fediverse that's not necessarily realistic but that we should aim for:
No actor controls a large portion of visible activity.
Users can move between instances without penalty.
Creating and running an instance requires minimal effort.
People on or entering the fediverse understand the variety of available options.
There is no downside to using free and open-source platforms over proprietary ones.
These definitely aren't comprehensive, and if you have anything you'd add, let's discuss that! They're currently helping me reassess my stance on Threads now that Flipboard is also entering the stage, and I hope they're helpful for others as well.
I'll elaborate on these five statements in the comments.
@nw@mike that’s a great question. I would also like to know if you can read #flipboard magazines and comments on Flipboard directly here on #mastodon. I know you can post directly from Flipboard to the #fediverse. Engagement would be much better if we can interact directly from both platforms. :flipboard: #Community#activitypub
What’s the BBC up to in the Fediverse? What have they learned so far from their experiments? And how is all this like the early days of the internet? In the latest episode of Dot Social, Flipboard CEO @mike chats with @Ianforrester, Senior Firestarter at @BBCRD. (How cool is that title, btw!)
A new episode of Dot Social, the first podcast about the open social web, is out! In it, Flipboard CEO @mike chats with ActivityPub co-author @evan about what the protocol unlocks for builders and entrepreneurs, how open-source social networks change our relationships to content and each other, and why any of this matters at all. Learn more and take a listen!
I'm so excited about federating #Flipboard to the #Fediverse! We are getting closer every day.
I just recently saw a demo from our engineering team of a Flipboard account being fully federated and followable from #Mastodon. Now we need to interpret all the engagement signals (commenting, favoriting, etc) properly. This includes designing what Flipboard users should see when they click on Mastodon users who reply to them and vice versa. A bunch more to do but we are making serious progress.