In December, we started to federate the accounts of some Flipboard publishers and in February, we introduced Magazines to the fediverse. Now, we’re taking two important steps: federating the accounts of 400 creators and expert curators; and enabling two-way communication so that new followers and fediverse activity are visible and actionable in the Flipboard app.
To learn more about this, take a look at our blogpost:
Thanks so much to everyone who has given feedback on what we’ve done so far. We welcome your thoughts and comments as we continue on our journey to fully federate Flipboard.
There’s a new playbook being written right now when it comes to the future of social media. The early-mover advantage is still in effect, and there’s a lot to figure out. Gone are opaque algorithms and the whims of any single company.
The fediverse represents a chance for quality journalism to shine again.
We talked to two leaders at fedi-forward publications — @TheConversationUS's @BostonAbrams, and @404mediaco's @jasonkoebler — about why they’re investing in the open social web, what they’ve learned so far, and their advice for other publishers just getting started.
We'd love to get the #NewstodonFriday hashtag going again. This, as far as we can remember, was started by @gbhnews, and is an initiative to feature work from newsrooms that have an active presence in the #fediverse
If you're a news organization, share your handle and your favorite story of the week in the comments to this! And if there's a publication in the fediverse that you love, let us know about that in the comments too.
I've decided to ACTIVELY decouple from Twitter: Every day, I go back and DM at least 10 of my followers, telling them I've moved here and to follow me here instead (I remove them as followers after that DM). A number of them have set up accounts as a result.
Please do the same if you're more active here than on #Twitter That's how you can help the #twittermigration
"As Flipboard’s head of creator community, I’m often explaining WTF the fediverse is and trying to convince creators to set up camp there. (Flipboard believes this is the future of social media.)," writes @miaq in the latest edition of our Fedi Curious newsletter. "If I’m lucky, the person is open to it, able to figure out how to get set up, and gives it a try. But more often than not, I get the digital equivalent of a blank stare and a groan — not another social platform?!" Here's her post about why creators should pay attention to what's happening here, and why the fediverse is not the same as all those other platforms.
What does it mean to federate your Flipboard profile? In the simplest terms, it means that whatever you curate (aka share) on Flipboard will be "syndicated" out to the fediverse with no extra effort. @miaq tests it out and breaks it down.
Last month, Meta's Threads took its first step into the fediverse. @quillmatiq, aka @quillmatiq took that as his cue to experiment with how his Threads feed would look like on Mastodon. Here's what he discovered about organizing the chaos, different clients (hello @phanpy) and whether he'll cut the Threads cord when federation is complete.
Yesterday, we announced our federation of 400 Flipboard curators and curators, so today, we're highlighting just a few you can follow on subjects like food, leadership, basketball, and sustainable food systems.
Allen Westly, technology enthusiast, cybersecurity practitioner, and diversity advocate — @West1118
Brian Fanzo, digital futurist, podcaster and ADHD advocate — @iSocialFanz
Camille Styles, lifestyle writer passionate about plant-based cooking and design and beauty — @CamilleStyles
Christie Vanover, champion pitmaster and creator of Girls Can Grill — @GirlsCanGrill
Daniel Hakimi, style curator and men’s fashion writer — @DanHakimi
Darryl Benjamin, educator and advocate for sustainable food systems — @Kafkaturtle
Janette Speyer, professional marketer passionate about cooking, travel, fashion and connecting the Flipboard community — @JanetteSpeyer
Jennifer Petoff, travel writer and creator of Sidewalk Safari — @sidewalksafari
Jessica Bethel, Los Angeles-based photographer — @4eyedgirl
Ken Yeung, journalist and author of "The AI Economy" newsletter — @thekenyeung
Louisa Moje, pharmacist, fashionista and foodie — @foodpluswords_
Marco Secchi, visual storyteller and photographer — @msecchi
Markus Weber, sustainable agriculture and agtech — @Maakusi
Maurizo Leo, bestselling cookbook author and creator of The Perfect Loaf — @theperfectloaf
Pete Gleason, PhD, professor, psychologist and innovator — @pgleason
Phil McKinney, technologist, author and podcaster — @philmckinney
Scott Kleinberg, OG Flipboarder and proud Apple fanboy — @scottkleinberg
Scott Monty, business leader, executive coach and podcaster — @scottmonty
Tayo Oredola, food writer and creator of Low Carb Africa — @lowcarbafrica
WBB Daily — curator who specializes in women’s basketball, passionate about growing the game — @smrice
Wesley Fryer, STEM educator and media literacy advocate — @wfryer
I agree with @gruber. Not federating is certainly a choice admins can make, but it's unlikely to have an impact considering that Threads is being bootstrapped off the Instagram social graph.
Would you rather keep the fediverse restricted to its current population of ~8M people or scale it to ~2.35B+?
Does anyone on #SFBA have experience writing opinion pieces for local news papers? The admin team is about to attempt a draft explaining SFBA and the fediverse to a local paper audience. Ideally, in a way it could be customized to each area of the bay! I’d love to invite our neighbors to join us here 🎉
Also, I’d love to hear about your local paper so I can include them 📰 I would be super excited if you want to write it for your paper too! I’d greatly prefer to have a recommendation come from someone in the community than one of the admin team for the website 😅
The new #spreadmastodon project needs to balance the damage with the good it does with its outreach project.
The wider #Fediverse relying heavily on a single platform, mastodon or instance https://mastodon.social, can have negative consequences. Leading to a concentration of power and influence in the hands of a few individuals and entities. This can result in issues such as censorship, lack of innovation, and a loss of privacy for users.
By decentralizing at its core, it is important to not do the obvious #NGO thing and centralize round one codebase and one instances, this is so obviously a stupid thing to do for the #Fediverse and the #openweb, but as you say it's a good thing to do for #mainstreaming so let's talk balance BEFORE you push this out as damage.
So everyone is clear and responsible for their actions, in public #4opens
Celebrities and big brands may never flock to Mastodon. It's just the nature of the platform to target a small community rather than a large audience, and for those hoping to do that, they'll pick centralized systems every time. But for me, that's just fine. I like it here. Maybe some other friends would like it here too, that's what @spreadmastodon is about. Not having your social media owned by a corporation is a great feeling. Let's make it more common.
Some prospective or new users may be turned off by unsolicited replies.
Mastodon is experimenting with a feature to dissuade people from writing them to any user in the first place.
"While we’re exploring multiple different avenues to tackle this issue, the idea we’re experimenting with today is simply reminding people when they’re about to respond to a stranger. We also believe that by showing a bit of information about the person you’re about to talk to, we can prevent some awkward situations, such as explaining something to an expert in a given field."
Does anyone on #SFBA have experience writing opinion pieces for local news papers? The admin team is about to attempt a draft explaining SFBA and the fediverse to a local paper audience. Ideally, in a way it could be customized to each area of the bay! I’d love to invite our neighbors to join us here 🎉
Also, I’d love to hear about your local paper so I can include them too 📰 I would be super excited if you want to write it for your paper too! I’d greatly prefer to have a recommendation come from someone in the community than one of the admin team for the website 😅
We ran a webinar on April 18 for creators and curators who are curious about the fediverse, have a federated Flipboard account, and don't know what to do next. Here's a link to the recording, plus the TL;DR bullet points if you don't have time to watch it.
As Twitter continues to experience issues (ideological and technical), people will be looking for a place to go. Would you support instances purchasing small ad campaigns on Twitter to let users know about mastodon as an alternative?
I’d love to read more about your opinion in the comments, too!