Flipboard will allow you to follow Fediverse accounts directly in the app

Flipboard is delivering on a major fediverse promise. Late last year, around the same time it announced it would switch user accounts to ActivityPub, Flipboard said it planned to let users follow users on federated platforms that use ActivityPub from the Flipboard app. As of Tuesday, that feature is live, meaning you can follow people from places like Mastodon, Threads, and Pixelfed right inside Flipboard.

Flipboard will showcase fediverse profiles in a few different ways across the app. For example, Flipboard’s search will show fediverse accounts, while the Explore tab will feature editorially curated recommendations, according to a press release. In a screenshot shared by Flipboard, the Explore section has a “Fediverse” tab that’s filled with profiles like Edge Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel’s Threads account and Mike Masnick’s Mastodon account, and you can follow them with a single tap.

While you will be able to see posts from federated accounts on other platforms, you will not be able to reply to or like posts from Flipboard if your Flipboard account is not Also federated, which may not apply to everyone. Flipboard has only enabled this for some accounts so far, and if your account isn’t federated yet, you’ll be able to request it, says Flipboard’s Marci McCue Edge.

Still, expanding Flipboard to include the fediverse could make it a one-stop-shop for news AND social media posts from people you’re most interested in. The idea intrigues me; I usually keep my article feeds and social feeds in separate apps, but I can see how combining the two could be useful.

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