Flipboard lets you follow Fediverse accounts directly in the app

Flipboard is making good on a big Fediverse promise. Late last year, Flipboard simultaneously announced that user accounts would be moving to ActivityPub. At the same time, the company announced that users would now be able to follow users on federated platforms that use ActivityPub from within the Flipboard app. Starting Tuesday, that feature will be available, allowing you to follow people from places like Mastodon, Threads, and Pixelfed directly in Flipboard.

Flipboard will showcase Fediverse profiles in the app in a number of ways. For example, Flipboard’s search will display Fediverse accounts, while the Discover tab will feature editorially curated recommendations, a press release said. In a screenshot shared by Flipboard, there is a “Fediverse” tab in the Discover section, filled with profiles like edge The accounts “Threads” of editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and “Mastodon” of Mike Masnick, and you can follow these accounts with a tap.

While you can see posts from federated accounts on other platforms, you cannot reply to or like those posts from Flipboard unless your Flipboard account is Also federated, which may not be the case for everyone. Flipboard has only enabled this for some accounts so far, and if your account isn’t federated yet, you can request it, says Marci McCue of Flipboard The edge.

Still, Flipboard’s diversity expansion could make the app a one-stop shop for your news And Social media posts from the people you care about most. I’m intrigued by the idea; I usually keep my article feeds and my social feeds in separate apps, but I can imagine it could be useful to combine the two.

Flipboard has been a vocal proponent of federation. The company created its own Mastodon instance (Flipboard.social) in 2023, and CEO Mike McCue has written and spoken about how important he thinks federation is. But thanks to things like this Flipboard update and the newly added ability in threads to see replies to your federated posts, the lofty promises of federated social networks are becoming more of a reality.