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Mike McCue

Hello Fediverse!

@Flipboard is currently a walled garden.

It's a beautiful, highly curated walled garden filled with content from the worlds best publishers and creators curated by Flipboard's editorial team as well as our community of magazine makers.

But it's still a walled garden. Today that begins to change.

We've moved four of our most popular #curation desks into the Fediverse for you to enjoy.

@NewsDesk
@TechDesk
@CultureDesk
@ScienceDesk

Details below:

about.flipboard.com/inside-fli

19 Apr 2023 at 18:48 | Open on flipboard.social
51 comments
Tara

@mike Fantastic! Can we have sports soon too?

19 Apr 2023 at 18:52 | Open on sfba.social
Mike McCue

Flipboard's curation desks are staffed 24/7 by curators who know where and how to find the good stuff on the Internet including here in the Fediverse.

In addition to their normal daily curation, they will now be scouring the @Fediverse (including @Mastodon, @pixelfed, @calckey and more) to find and boost the best posts and conversations happening here.

They will engage directly with you. And they will be looking for suggestions. All to help the best stuff here get discovered by more people.

19 Apr 2023 at 18:57 | Open on flipboard.social
Fediverse Report

@mike Great to hear, congrats on the launch! Seems like these are good accounts to suggest for new people to follow as well.

19 Apr 2023 at 19:19 | Open on mastodon.social
Mike McCue

@fediversereport Yes. These curation desks are a great way for new users to get a good home timeline quickly while also enabling them to discover a whole new set of people to follow based on their interests.

This is a big reason why these curation desks are staffed with expert curators rather than being powered by bots. The idea is to engage directly with communities in the Fediverse to help people discover each other.

19 Apr 2023 at 19:29 | Open on flipboard.social
Tim Chambers

@mike @fediversereport

This is a great innovation on how to do this - and way to bring human-curated content discovery to the #Fediverse. #Bravo.

19 Apr 2023 at 19:39 | Open on indieweb.social
Mike McCue

@tchambers @fediversereport Thanks Tim! Human curation is even more important now than when we started Flipboard.

19 Apr 2023 at 19:49 | Open on flipboard.social
Wigbert B 🎻🏛🎭🎤🗞🎥📚

@mike @tchambers @fediversereport

fortunately, well-done/ sophisticated #curation can not be replaced by bots or #AI, as it includes human curiosity & intuition…

19 Apr 2023 at 20:17 | Open on mastodon.world
Tim Chambers

@wigbert @mike @fediversereport

It reminds me of the difference between sharing hand-crafted music playlists, versus AI created playlists made by machines using some algo of which we know not.

And is so much more in the spirit of the Fediverse.

19 Apr 2023 at 22:41 | Open on indieweb.social
stuart

@mike @pixelfed @calckey "We share stories, explainers and analysis to offer context for the top news of the day."

It seems to cover only US News. That's maybe 2% of the top stories. That's possibly OK if you are targetting a US market - but this is a global one.

Maybe I didn't scroll far enough.

19 Apr 2023 at 19:30 | Open on social.brainsys.com
Mike McCue

@stuart @pixelfed @calckey We are covering global news but starting with English language with these first four desks. We are exploring how to bring our international desks into the Fediverse in the hopefully near future.

19 Apr 2023 at 19:36 | Open on flipboard.social
Colin Devroe

@mike What is the process to suggest a URL, toot, etc. to these desks?

19 Apr 2023 at 19:47 | Open on mastodon.social
Mike Fraser :Jets:

@mike@flipboard.social @pixelfed @calckey I'm going to add these to our suggested follows during the onboarding process.

19 Apr 2023 at 20:24 | Open on thecanadian.social
Chris Shaw
Flipboard Science Desk

@chrisshaw Still a thing! 😉 And diving into the Fediverse.

19 Apr 2023 at 23:13 | Open on flipboard.social
John Markoff
Raygan Kelly :hatbird:

@mike i definitely welcome this, it’s good to have more curated feeds on the fediverse

19 Apr 2023 at 19:06 | Open on bird.rodeo
Colin Devroe
Jessica Jordan

@2foodtrippers, you asked for a few account to follow. Check these out!

19 Apr 2023 at 19:41 | Open on flipboard.social
Kevin Russell

@mike @Flipboard @NewsDesk @TechDesk @CultureDesk @ScienceDesk

If you bring anti democracy publications in be ready to get blocks.

19 Apr 2023 at 19:45 | Open on mstdn.social
Mike McCue

@kevinrns @Flipboard @NewsDesk @TechDesk @CultureDesk @ScienceDesk I deeply understand and appreciate that. We hold ourselves to the same standard.

19 Apr 2023 at 19:56 | Open on flipboard.social
Ry Chaz

@mike @Flipboard @NewsDesk @TechDesk @CultureDesk @ScienceDesk

This stance makes me love Flipboard all the more. I access it every day. Integration with Mastodon is really inspiring in a time where information quality is so often eroding.

20 Apr 2023 at 3:10 | Open on mastodon.nz
Stephen Judge 🇮🇪🇪🇺

@mike Mike what's the business model of #Flipboard now? Do you rely on advertising revenue frim your mobile app, or deals with media publishers, or user subscriptions?

What will make your business sustainable and how will opening up to the #fediverse help your goal?

19 Apr 2023 at 19:55 | Open on mastodon.social
FinchHaven

@StephenJudge @mike

The immediate business model (and thank you for using that exact term) is to drive engagement back into flipboard dot social and flipboard dot com

Make no mistake about that

Also see:

Tony Stubblebine and Medium dot com aka me dot dm

19 Apr 2023 at 21:27 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
Mike McCue

@StephenJudge At present we are entirely ad based on Flipboard. Our vision for advertising has been to emulate what you see in print magazines like Vogue, Surfer or Climbing with ads that are beautiful, respectful, and contextual and do not violate privacy.

As we look to the Fediverse we know we need to enable monetization in a way that fully supports the first principles that the Fediverse was founded on. We have some good ideas here but much work, learning and collaboration remains.

20 Apr 2023 at 3:47 | Open on flipboard.social
Pretty Hat Machine

@mike just one request. Please make sure the Newsdesk doesn’t just become American news. If you want US and International to ensure engagement then please do that. Just so frustrating that so many news aggregators just end up being US centric.

19 Apr 2023 at 20:13 | Open on mastodon.social
MikeFromLFE

@prettyhatmech @mike
Absolutely!
We need independent reporting of European (including British) news - it's too centralised so an outsider's view is vital

19 Apr 2023 at 20:24 | Open on mastodon.me.uk
Mike McCue

@MikeFromLFE @prettyhatmech Agree. Some of the folks curating these desks actually live in the UK and Europe.

19 Apr 2023 at 22:35 | Open on flipboard.social
Mike McCue
Flipboard News Desk

@mike @prettyhatmech Noted! We just posted a fascinating story about China and India population sizes.

19 Apr 2023 at 21:14 | Open on flipboard.social
FinchHaven

@mike @Flipboard @NewsDesk @TechDesk @CultureDesk @ScienceDesk

I'll be watching with little interest, but with a lot of caution

If this ends up being another Mastodon scraping process, where you pull content off different instances and use them to drive engagement/traffic back into flipboard dot social and flipboard dot com, I'll probably end up muting the profiles and perhaps even blocking the instance

You invoke "Walled Garden"

Tony Stubblebine likes to invoke "Federation"

We shall see

19 Apr 2023 at 21:24 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
Lee 🌏
William Gunn

@mike @Flipboard Any thoughts on splitting politics out of news to its own account?

19 Apr 2023 at 23:27 | Open on mastodon.social
Mike McCue

@williamgunn @Flipboard Yes, we will do this once we get our sea legs and feel we can handle the inevitable increase in moderation responsibilities and scale this will entail.

20 Apr 2023 at 3:33 | Open on flipboard.social
Tage B.
Sharon of the Strange Times
Emma
Bob Wyman

@mike @Flipboard @NewsDesk @TechDesk @CultureDesk @ScienceDesk It is great to see the Flipboard folk beginning to provide news curation in the same way that @memeorandum and @Techmeme have been doing. I think we'd all benefit greatly from there being more such curators on the SocialWeb.

20 Apr 2023 at 1:49 | Open on mastodon.social
Chris Trottier

@mike Mike, I’m so glad that you’ve taken this step.

20 Apr 2023 at 2:42 | Open on mastodon.social
Mike McCue

@atomicpoet Thanks so much Chris! You've inspired us to ensure we are curating the whole Fediverse, not only Mastodon. So you can be sure we'll be curating posts from PixelFed and more. Let me know if you have suggestions here.

20 Apr 2023 at 3:25 | Open on flipboard.social
ACAB for Cutie :stl_cards:
simongarlick
Kelly Guimont

@mike Thanks Mike! I'm glad Flipboard is embracing the new digs.

20 Apr 2023 at 2:47 | Open on mastodon.social
Zee

@mike @Flipboard @NewsDesk @TechDesk @CultureDesk @ScienceDesk well! What do you know!

#FlipBoard, welcome to the #fediverse! Many new things to learn about. #Hashtags are king- the main way that your posts will be found by those who don’t follow you.
@feditips is great at… fediverse-related tips.
Also, leave your résumé on the pile with the rest. The Fediverse is #open (¬､¬)

20 Apr 2023 at 2:49 | Open on mas.to
Old One Eye

@mike Still learning and populating my Home Screen.... all followed!

20 Apr 2023 at 3:11 | Open on mastodon.social
Mike McCue

@oldoneeye Hopefully you'll find lots of other folks to follow via these desks.

20 Apr 2023 at 3:28 | Open on flipboard.social
Alexander Ivanov

@mike Haven't heard of Flipboard since ...2015?, when it came pre-installed on Samsung devices and first thing user asked is to how to remove it.

Now RSS is dead, Twitter is filled with hatred, and Flipboard app itself didn't work (at least in Russia). But Fediverse is able to bring content creators to more people, with more privacy and less restrictions

20 Apr 2023 at 3:37 | Open on c.im
Mike McCue

@saiv46 are you based in Russia? They blocked us. So did China and North Korea. That said we still curate Russian content. Have you tried accessing Flipboard through a VPN?

20 Apr 2023 at 4:06 | Open on flipboard.social
Bjorn Toft Madsen
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