Flipboard's Surf aggregates the fragmented social web into custom feeds

Flipboard is betting that consumers won't choose a single social platform, but will instead want algorithmic curation across incompatible networks—positioning aggregation as the product rather than any individual protocol. By launching after 18 months of testing, the company is building infrastructure for an era where no single feed dominates, creating value through orchestration rather than network effects. Consumer demand appears to center not on loyalty to Mastodon or Bluesky individually, but on relief from checking five apps to see everything worth seeing.