We’re excited to introduce Surf Starter Sets, a streamlined experience for creating and discovering custom feeds on Surf, the first open social web browser. Custom feeds allow people to focus their social media experience. Instead of one monolithic For You feed, people can create separate feeds for hobbies, sports teams, communities, professional interests, and more. These dedicated spaces let people dive into their interests, join conversations around specific topics, and check in with their communities. This capability can shift how people think of their time online, making it about intention not attention.

Surf gives users the power to search the entire open social web and quickly add favorite sources from Bluesky, Threads or Mastodon, community hashtags, RSS feeds, podcasts and YouTube channels to their own custom feed. Custom feeds on Surf are powerful cross-platform ‘timelines’ for any interest or community, and now they can be built in minutes. 

The new Starter Sets kickstart feed creation. They’re organized around popular categories and meant to inspire new feed builders. Starter Sets are pre-populated with recommended sources, bootstrapping custom feeds with relevant and diverse content curated by the Surf community. Each Starter Set also includes an option to add a feed from a social account (Bluesky and/or Mastodon) that is filtered by that topic, something only available on Surf.

There are dozens of great recommended sources to pick from in each Starter Set. To check out a recommended feed before adding it to their own custom feed, users can tap into it and explore the content. For users who are looking to add specific sources or personalities, we’ve also included a search field above the recommended list. Once the feed is built, it’s saved on the user’s profile and pinned to their Surf Home screen for easy access.

Control and customization can make feeds more useful and enjoyable, keeping a feed on a specific topic or moderating contributors. In a user’s feed Settings, Surf provides filters that help users tune their feed to stay on a specific topic or exclude topics. For example, if a feed is meant to be about Tech and includes important personalities that also share their political views, it can be filtered to stay on the topic of ‘Technology’. Or if a feed that’s organized around a community hashtag is being abused by one actor, that source can be excluded from the feed. As Surf evolves these features will continue to expand to support healthy, active communities.  

Using Surf you can browse the entire open social web and curate a social media experience designed around you. If you’d like to test it out with us, sign up on the waitlist at surf.social and keep up on all the Surf releases by following us on Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads.

*Surf is a product designed and built by the team at Flipboard.