Open social web browser Surf integrates with Bluesky in latest beta

Surf, the new app from Flipboard for browsing the open social web, is expanding its support for Bluesky’s social network. On Monday, the company announced a new version of its beta software (dubbed “Blue Wave”) which allows users to log into the app using their Bluesky credentials and then see all their Bluesky feeds in Surf, including their following feed, discover feed, and any of the custom feeds they’ve pinned in the Bluesky app.

The new integration will also allow users to access other Bluesky sources when building their own custom feeds — like Bluesky’s Starter Packs, which are lists of recommended followers that people build to help new users find connections. Other Bluesky sources, like Lists and Custom Feeds, are also available as sources.

With the addition, Surf becomes an alternative to using the Bluesky app itself, as you’re able to interact with posts from Bluesky’s network by liking, replying to, and reposting them, while likes and replies from users on Bluesky’s app also display in Surf.

Explains Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, Surf gives you “seamless access” to anyone posting on Bluesky, Mastodon or Threads.

“It’s the social web coming to life and unifying the social web,” he says.

Plus, he sees apps like Surf as a good alternative to centralized social media, which is becoming filled with AI-generated content.

“The AI overrun is just brutal,” he says. “This is why I really think RSS is so important because it gives you access to all the best YouTube content, podcasts and newsletters from real people. By being explicit about the sources that you choose, and looking at people that you trust and what sources they’ve recommended, it’s the power of human connection to help filter away all the AI slop,” McCue notes.

Another new beta feature is a setup wizard that will guide you through the process of creating your own custom home feed in Surf — something the company aims to add to other custom feed creation tools further down the road.

Here, you can design your own universal timeline of sorts, by combining feeds from Mastodon and Bluesky, including your following feeds or other custom feeds, like Bluesky’s “Popular with Friends” or “Discover.”

The setup wizard will also let you filter out content you don’t want to see in these feeds, like politics. There are even toggle switches to hide posts about Donald Trump or Elon Musk, if you’d prefer a more escapist feed.

“A lot of people I’ve personally spoken with are like…I use Bluesky to get away from the news. And I don’t want to read about Elon. I don’t want to hear any politics,” McCue explains.

Where Surf already shines is its ability to help you build your own topical feeds that combine posts from across open social networks and other open protocols like RSS. The latter allows you to add sources like news websites, blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels to your custom feeds.

For example, one of McCue’s feeds, “Tech Builders and Thinkers,” includes individuals whose accounts are on Mastodon, Bluesky, and YouTube.

The idea is to follow the people and the topics you’re interested in, without limiting yourself to a single platform.

For now, all feeds are public by default, allowing users to follow feeds that others have built. In time, however, McCue says your feeds will be private so you can pick and choose which ones you want to share more broadly.

You can also tweak the design and layout of the feeds you build, setting their cover image and background color, as well as picking which tab is their default.

You can have feeds that look more like a Twitter/X timeline by setting them to the “Discuss” view, or if you’d rather have them focused on images, audio, videos, or articles, you can choose other views, like “Look,” “Listen,” “Watch,” or “Read,” respectively.

Today, a number of developers are building TikTok-like or Instagram-like apps for Bluesky, which change how you view Bluesky’s content by focusing on a particular type of media. With Surf, you can get the same results without the need for a separate app and without limiting yourself to only Bluesky content.

The Surf Blue Wave beta update was first demonstrated at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, and will roll out to existing testers. The company will also be letting in a new wave of beta testers with this release. Surf will later exit Apple’s TestFlight testing platform so the app can reach beyond the limit of 10,000 testers that Apple imposes.

The company is also working on bringing the currently iOS-only Surf app to the web.