Flipboard joins the fediverse

Flipboard has announced it is joining the fediverse in a major way, by allowing you to interact with Mastodon through their app, as well as setting up their own instance. Reading the language in the blog posts, it is clear that Flipboard sees this not just as a side experiment, but that they are all in on the fediverse. The title of the announcement post by CEO Mike McCue (@mmccue) leaves little to the imagination: "The Future of Flipboard Is Federated".

Flipboard is a news reader app that has been around for a while, and it allows you to 'flip' through your posts. You can follow topics, specific timelines, or curated collections by users ('magazines'). The integration with the fediverse is as follows: You connect your Mastodon account to your Flipboard account, and then read through your timeline from your Flipboard app, in a Flipboard UI. This is currently only available on iOS, with Android coming later.

The second thing that Flipboard does is that they have set up their own Mastodon server, flipboard.social. The goal of this instance is to provide new users an easy point of access to the fediverse. The goal is to help with onboarding, but also for other Flipboard users to share their collections there.

Looking foward

Mike McCue is clear that Flipboard is not done yet with their fediverse integration, and is clearly looking ahead to what's possible. In the announcement he says: "Flipboard is exploring how best to implement ActivityPub so that we can federate our unique ecosystem with every service and user in the Fediverse. This will make it possible for users on Mastodon or other Fediverse services to follow content creators, curators and Magazines on Flipboard. Similarly, Flipboard users will be able to follow users and feeds on services like Mastodon, PixelFed and PeerTube. Ultimately, Flipboard is tearing down the walls of our own walled garden".

Two things stick out to me in this statement: McCue is clearly looking beyond Mastodon here. This is not an organisation that just got on the Mastodon bandwagon, but there is an understanding of the power of the fediverse that goes beyond just Mastodon. It will be interesting to see how further integration into services like PeerTube will look. Beyond that, it's not common to see an organisation call for tearing down their own walled garden. It shows that Flipboard understands this is a two-way street: read open data from an open network, but also open up your own data to the network.

In an interview with Engadget, McCue expects that Flipboard will not be the only one either: "“I think you're going to see, in the coming months, companies like us start to integrate ActivityPub and advocate to publishers and content creators that they should build a presence in the Fediverse,” he predicts. “Once that starts to reach critical mass … then I think you're gonna get that Netscape moment.”"