The core idea seems useful, collecting up various feeds into one place solves a real pain point. I also like the UI, very clean and can separate out by medium which is an unusual choice for...
The core idea seems useful, collecting up various feeds into one place solves a real pain point. I also like the UI, very clean and can separate out by medium which is an unusual choice for slicing up the feeds but I find it a relevant dimension.
I'm a little worried about two things though.
First, while the feeds regular users can create are namespaced by username, I don't find that particular helpful. There's lots of feeds sharing similar names and just generally being very similar to each other. Basically right now the search and discoverability for feeds is kinda poor.
Second, I really wish this stuff was a protocol and open source software for domains to host themselves than having it all run through surf.social. The general framing of 'helping the open web' by asking for accounts and viewing other people's content through their website is weird. Seeing verge.surf.social instead of going to the verge and getting a nice collected feed from them directly means we're still getting intermediaries. For a moment and movement trying to get away from centralized control and monopoly gatekeeping, it's just a little too similar for my tastes. All of the underlying feeds are still open and available through other means, so I'm not worried - if they decide to start putting up interstitials and ads and other hurdles (as other sites have done in the past), the offramps will be a lot smoother.
My point was to have something that can aggregate across RSS, Atom, atproto, activity pub, and any other feed like surface and re-expose it as a single feed. Which yeah, it'd be exposed as an...
My point was to have something that can aggregate across RSS, Atom, atproto, activity pub, and any other feed like surface and re-expose it as a single feed. Which yeah, it'd be exposed as an RSS/Atom feed. The point was more that there's still annoyances at getting everything munged into RSS, although looking around I do see stuff like https://github.com/open-risk/atp2rss, so perhaps it's easier than I thought.
That just sounds like a protocol-of-protocols. I feel like it’d be a matter of time before some of the underlying protocols change and it doesn’t catch up at the meta-protocol level and then you...
That just sounds like a protocol-of-protocols. I feel like it’d be a matter of time before some of the underlying protocols change and it doesn’t catch up at the meta-protocol level and then you have people forking the meta-protocol to support different sub-protocols differently.
Basically the “There are too many standards!” XKCD comic.
I knew I shouldn't have used the term protocol without having a more baked proposal... But I guess I'll still respond more even if the protocol suggestion wasn't actually the thrust of my original...
I knew I shouldn't have used the term protocol without having a more baked proposal... But I guess I'll still respond more even if the protocol suggestion wasn't actually the thrust of my original post. I was suggesting being able to convert everything into RSS, not a new meta protocol.
My desire is that a central service like surf.social shouldn't need to exist. I jumped the gun on assuming there were technical rather than social reasons for it. I want to accomplish whatever surf.social is doing from within the RSS readers I already use. On reflection I think that's already possible, just maybe cumbersome, so this was ignorance on my part of how to accomplish it.
They just released the new service. Surf is kind of Flipboard, but integrated with open social networks (ActivityPub/Mastodon and Bluesky) and allow you to create “feeds” cobbling together...
They just released the new service. Surf is kind of Flipboard, but integrated with open social networks (ActivityPub/Mastodon and Bluesky) and allow you to create “feeds” cobbling together different sources of any type.
The concept is really interesting, even though I'm not sure it will be popular. For instance, I created a “feed” for my pt_BR blog, with blogposts updates (via RSS), a Mastodon account, my YouTube channel and podcast episodes. The Verge is a ~launch partner and has a few feeds/communities.
The concept reminds me a lot of HTC Blinkfeed from 12 years ago. I used to be super wired into all my social media feeds and having them in one place was super useful. Nowadays I only really...
The concept reminds me a lot of HTC Blinkfeed from 12 years ago. I used to be super wired into all my social media feeds and having them in one place was super useful. Nowadays I only really browse Tildes, scroll Twitter for art, and then watch YouTube. I'll probably give this a spin to be more connected into news.
The core idea seems useful, collecting up various feeds into one place solves a real pain point. I also like the UI, very clean and can separate out by medium which is an unusual choice for slicing up the feeds but I find it a relevant dimension.
I'm a little worried about two things though.
First, while the feeds regular users can create are namespaced by username, I don't find that particular helpful. There's lots of feeds sharing similar names and just generally being very similar to each other. Basically right now the search and discoverability for feeds is kinda poor.
Second, I really wish this stuff was a protocol and open source software for domains to host themselves than having it all run through surf.social. The general framing of 'helping the open web' by asking for accounts and viewing other people's content through their website is weird. Seeing verge.surf.social instead of going to the verge and getting a nice collected feed from them directly means we're still getting intermediaries. For a moment and movement trying to get away from centralized control and monopoly gatekeeping, it's just a little too similar for my tastes. All of the underlying feeds are still open and available through other means, so I'm not worried - if they decide to start putting up interstitials and ads and other hurdles (as other sites have done in the past), the offramps will be a lot smoother.
That protocol does exist. It's an RSS or Atom feed.
Looks like surf.social does import RSS feeds. I don't know if it will export them as well.
My point was to have something that can aggregate across RSS, Atom, atproto, activity pub, and any other feed like surface and re-expose it as a single feed. Which yeah, it'd be exposed as an RSS/Atom feed. The point was more that there's still annoyances at getting everything munged into RSS, although looking around I do see stuff like https://github.com/open-risk/atp2rss, so perhaps it's easier than I thought.
That just sounds like a protocol-of-protocols. I feel like it’d be a matter of time before some of the underlying protocols change and it doesn’t catch up at the meta-protocol level and then you have people forking the meta-protocol to support different sub-protocols differently.
Basically the “There are too many standards!” XKCD comic.
I knew I shouldn't have used the term protocol without having a more baked proposal... But I guess I'll still respond more even if the protocol suggestion wasn't actually the thrust of my original post. I was suggesting being able to convert everything into RSS, not a new meta protocol.
My desire is that a central service like surf.social shouldn't need to exist. I jumped the gun on assuming there were technical rather than social reasons for it. I want to accomplish whatever surf.social is doing from within the RSS readers I already use. On reflection I think that's already possible, just maybe cumbersome, so this was ignorance on my part of how to accomplish it.
They just released the new service. Surf is kind of Flipboard, but integrated with open social networks (ActivityPub/Mastodon and Bluesky) and allow you to create “feeds” cobbling together different sources of any type.
The concept is really interesting, even though I'm not sure it will be popular. For instance, I created a “feed” for my pt_BR blog, with blogposts updates (via RSS), a Mastodon account, my YouTube channel and podcast episodes. The Verge is a ~launch partner and has a few feeds/communities.
The concept reminds me a lot of HTC Blinkfeed from 12 years ago. I used to be super wired into all my social media feeds and having them in one place was super useful. Nowadays I only really browse Tildes, scroll Twitter for art, and then watch YouTube. I'll probably give this a spin to be more connected into news.