Flipboard is the newest mainstream app to formally be a part of the fediverse, the gathering of decentralized providers that run on the ActivityPub protocol. The information studying app, which has been experimenting with Mastodon for practically a yr, now plans to turn into with Mastodon and the remainder of the fediverse.
The information studying app is beginning with the accounts of about two dozen publishers, together with Polygon, Medium, Semafor, Kotaku and Psychological Floss, whose Flipboard content material will likely be discoverable throughout the fediverse. By subsequent month, the corporate expects all public Flipboard accounts will likely be federated, that means anybody on an ActivityPub-powered app will be capable to view their posts and work together with them.
And starting in April, based on Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, all fediverse content material can even be available inside the Flipboard app itself. This implies customers will be capable to use Flipboard browse content material shared to Mastodon, Pixelfed (a photograph sharing app form of like Instagram), PeerTube (a decentralized video platform) and the remainder of the apps that make up the fediverse.
Flipboard’s official entrance into the fediverse comes at a second the place there’s m for ActivityPub inside the social media trade. Final week, Meta introduced that it was taking its towards making Threads appropriate with Mastodon and the remainder of the fediverse. “I feel you’ll most likely have greater than 150 million folks within the fediverse by the tip of the subsequent yr,” McCue tells Engadget, “You will have hundreds of thousands of Flipboard customers, hundreds of thousands of Threads customers all becoming a member of this community … it’s not going to take very lengthy earlier than this turns into the biggest social community.”
McCue’s enthusiasm for Mastodon and the fediverse is very notable given his as soon as shut ties to Twitter. The Flipboard CEO was a member of Twitter’s board between 2010 and 2012, and reportedly promoting Flipboard to the corporate in 2015. However Elon Musk’s takeover of the corporate, and the disintegration of its API, prompted him to start experimenting with Mastodon and integrations earlier this yr.
He now believes that momentum for the fediverse is so robust, Twitter could in the end find yourself supporting ActivityPub too. “Increasingly more corporations should take a look at ActivityPub,” he predicts. “I wouldn’t be stunned if Twitter in the end decides they’re going to have to do that.”
This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/flipboard-is-moving-to-the-fediverse-170426320.html?src=rss
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