Surf Social Websites

Happy launch day! The creator-controlled moderation is a really interesting part. How does the tooling for that work? Is it more about blocklists and filters, or something more advanced?

does it need any technical knowledge?

I like how it aggregates a creator's content and allows to filter it in different ways.As a viewer, am I supposed to be able to interact with the content beyond viewing it? Like how am I supposed to comment. Do I have to go create a mastodon account to comment? And then a bluesky account to comment on the blusky posts? Or does surf handle all of that?

btw there's a cool easter egg that people haven't discovered yet. Click on the stats under the surf logo on surf.social.

This is a big unlock for independent creators and communities. Pulling together Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and RSS into one curated social website is exactly what the decentralized web has been missing. Are you seeing more traction from publishers or individual creators so far?

Coolest launch of the day for sure! Do you think surf feeds could become a new kind of owned media asset for creators (like newsletters or domains etc)?

Love the idea of giving creators a real destination they own.If I understand correctly, you still post on Bluesky or Mastodon and Surf just organizes and surfaces that — is that right? Wondering how discoverability works for a solo indie maker just starting out vs. established brands like The Verge.

Three years ago, when we first saw Mastodon and learned more about the open protocols it was built on, we realized how powerful a shared open social graph could be, putting the power of our connections back in the hands of people. We decided to join the movement and opened ‘federated’ Flipboard, sharing our editorial curation with the fediverse. Once we had integrated our backend with the social web it was time to rethink the front end. That's what lead to Surf.After 2.5 years of development we’re finally launching Surf, a new kind of browser for a new kind of web: the open social web. Surf lets anyone easily discover, browse and make feeds on the social web which bring together people, podcasts, videos, newsletters, blogs, photos and more for whatever they're into. And because this is the social web, these feeds can be published to Bluesky or published as social websites that live outside of Surf. Already some amazing creators have launched sites like verge.surf.social, wired.surf.social, filmfeed.surf.social and allnet.surf.social. Social websites represent a whole new way for creators to build destinations for their communities around their content, without being owned and operated by the social media giants of today.I especially want to thank @chrismessina for not only hunting for us but for being a source of inspiration for how these feeds and sites should work across identities and accounts on the social web. Super excited to hear what you think and answer any questions you have.

I'm just back from the AtmosphereConf, where I traveled with @mmccue and Ryan Barret by overnight train to join others in work to decentralize the social web!And now Mike and @marci_mccue are here to launch something that's been over a year in the making: Social Websites. The idea should be familiar, but the implementation and the scale is what's new.Now anyone can build and launch their own corner of the internet and pull in social content from @Bluesky , @Mastodon , @Pixelfed, @Threads (and more!) with familiar publishers like The Verge, Decoder, Vergecast, Version History, WIRED, Rolling Stone Politics, 404 Media, Shutdown Fullcast, The MMQB, Defector: Sports!, All Net, FilmFeed, and The Oregonian participating.Making a Social WebsiteUsing surf.social, anyone can make a Surf feed, publish it with a subdomain and launch it as their own social website. Feeds can include sources from Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, YouTube, podcast services, blogs and newsletters (RSS). Users can also assign a community hashtag, allowing people to contribute to the feed simply by using the hashtag. They can also set filters and exclude profiles or terms to keep the conversation on topic. More tools to customize (e.g., adding custom headers and colors) and manage feeds are coming soon. Most importantly, social websites can now be shared outside of Surf, with online communities or linked in websites.The Android app is now available and the iOS app is coming soon.