I've got access to the beta of the Surf app. Some thoughts:
some stuff I really liked:
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rss works (though no custom URLs yet, just what they already scraped)
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you get lemmy, mastodon, bluesky, threads all together
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you can make your own feeds and check what other people made (like a custom timeline, or topic-specific like “NBA”, “woodworking”, “retro gaming stuff”)
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has different modes: you can switch between videos, articles, podcasts depending on the feed
but also...
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can’t add your own RSS feeds (huge miss)
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some feeds break and show no posts even when they’re active (ok, it's still a beta)
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YouTube videos have ads (not into that—I support creators through patreon, affiliate links, whatever. not ads)
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feeds you create are public by default unless you manually change it
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not open source. built on open protocols, sure. but the app is locked up. (HUGE MISS)
all that said, I really believe: better feeds = better experience = better shot at the fediverse going mainstream.
anyone else tried it?
do you know anyone building an open source version of this? is that even realistic?
I’d love to hear what do you think :)
Soooo…
I’ve been working on something for a while now. It has RSS feeds and partial support for ActivityPub, and it’s also got federated web search.
I’m considering adding AT proto for bsky support soon but it’s not a top priority.
It’s been in friends-and-family testing for about a year now. The intent is to release under AGPL, but development is closed until I feel the code quality can withstand scrutiny from this brutal community 😅
Right now I have a to-do list full of things that are stopping me from letting more people access it. My hope is to get them knocked out this summer, though. I’ll definitely post something here when that happens.
I heard about Surf well after I’d already been working on this, and signed up for the beta but have been on the waiting list since last year. I’d really love to see their approach.