For over a decade, Flipboard’s in-house editorial team has been curating the world’s best journalism around the clock. But to access this curation, you had to use the Flipboard app or visit flipboard.com.
Now we’ve decided to federate our Flipboard editorial profiles and their related Magazines in order to make our collections available to everyone on Mastodon and other Fediverse networks. In short, Flipboard is tearing down the walls around our app and making our content available to a much wider audience. As we experiment, we hope our learnings can serve as a guide to publishers and content creators as they enter the next generation of social media.
These are the first Flipboard editorial accounts to federate:
If you’re a real news junkie or culture fanatic, you can follow these accounts. But we warn you! Our editors post around the clock so it can be a bit of a firehose. We think most users will prefer to follow the topically arranged Magazines from these accounts. So, for example, you can follow the NFL and college basketball without getting inundated with stories about NBA and MLB. At the bottom of this post, we offer examples by category.
This brings up an interesting challenge in the Fediverse: any individual or publisher may have multiple accounts, which you’ll see when searching in Mastodon. Which one do I follow? No need to worry; different accounts have different purposes.
Our CEO, Mike McCue, is a good example. He has several accounts: Mastodon, federated Flipboard and Pixelfed. Mastodon is where Mike posts about industry issues and communicates with the community. His Flipboard federated account showcases his great Magazines such as Following the Fediverse and Final Frontier. Pixelfed is his photo activity.
As we announced last week, federated Flipboard Magazines aren’t just for our in-house editorial curation. A select group of publishers already have their Flipboard collections available on Mastodon. Eventually, the goal is for everything on Flipboard to be available to the Fediverse.
To start, many publishers may only have their federated Flipboard Magazines. But in time, as users continue to migrate away from X (née Twitter), publishers may invest more deeply in their social presence on Mastodon, Threads and/or Bluesky. Each account may have a different type of content or tone and people can follow the ones that interest them. The unique advantage of federated Flipboard accounts and Magazines is that they make it easy for people to follow the topics they’re truly interested in.
Even after federating our Flipboard editorial desks, we’ll continue to run the hand-curated Mastodon desks that we started within the last year: News, Tech, Science, Culture and Art & Photo. This is where we’ll continue to highlight best-in-class content, engage with the community and boost interesting conversations.
The open social web is evolving rapidly and there’s sure to be a lot of experimentation. Please dive in and share feedback!
This is just a sampling of Flipboard editorial Magazines (all curated by humans). And here’s a how-to guide for following Magazines and organizing your content in list on Mastodon..
News
U.S. Politics
Tech
Science
Culture
Sports
Health
“The Latest Health News & Research”
— Carl Sullivan, North America managing editor, curates several personal Magazines that can now be followed in the Fediverse, including Food Stuff and “Great Journalism”