After the TikTok ban went into impact on Sunday, social community Bluesky launched a customized feed for movies on its platform. Now, Flipboard’s latest app, Surf, which is devoted to shopping the open social net and decentralized providers like Mastodon and Bluesky, is making the most of that transfer to introduce a video feed of its personal.
Initially, Surf’s video feed was a mixture of video posts on Bluesky’s “trending video” feed and people posts that included the hashtag #SkyTok. The corporate says it is going to quickly personalize its feed to the top consumer, too.
This can assist differentiate Surf’s video feed from Bluesky’s personal. It additionally represents the ability that comes from permitting third events to construct feeds for a social networking platform. Surf is at present in beta with a sign-up record accessible for testers.
“That is simply the newest instance of how customized feeds on the social net can be utilized for all kinds of use instances — video sharing, picture sharing, dialogue teams, messaging, and so forth. — which were the unique area of the big walled gardens,” Flipboard CEO Mike McCue instructed TechCrunch through e-mail. “We’re nonetheless early days however issues are shifting tremendous quick right here, particularly on AT Proto [the protocol that powers Bluesky.]”
To personalize the brand new Surf video feed, McCue mentioned the corporate will quickly add customers’ Bluesky Following timeline (which is simply one other customized feed) as a supply for the feed. That is additionally filtered to indicate solely video posts. When this closing step is accomplished, the feed will show movies from the individuals the customers themselves observe.
After Bluesky on Sunday shipped its native customized video feed, which employs a brand new TikTok-style consumer interface, Surf adopted that design for its feed, as nicely. (Be aware: should you’re not seeing the TikTok-style interface on Bluesky, attempt restarting your cell app a number of instances.)
Should you’re not ready to make use of Surf, which remains to be in personal beta, you should utilize its feed instantly on Bluesky. Surf federated its new customized video feed to Blueksy the place it’s accessible as one other native, customized feed possibility.
McCue factors out that Surf itself can be utilized to make totally different sorts of video feeds, too.
For instance, he additionally constructed a “BookTok” kind feed, which focuses on customers discussing books on video, just like TikTok’s BookTok neighborhood. This feed may be seen on each Surf and Bluesky.
To make this feed, McCue included all movies tagged with the hashtags #BookTok and #BookSky.
Nonetheless, as a result of these tags might exist on different apps apart from Bluesky, while you use the feed on Surf itself, you’ll be capable of see movies from different providers like YouTube, Threads, and Mastodon, along with movies from Bluesky. That’s potential as a result of Surf permits customers to discover a number of social networks in its app, together with these powered by protocols like ActivityPub (utilized by Mastodon), the AT Protocol (utilized by Bluesky), and RSS.
