Flipboard, a social magazine app from the Web 2.0 era rebooting itself to take advantage of a renewed push toward an open social web, is becoming increasingly entrenched in the fediverse-the network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and eventually, Instagram Threads, among others. Today the company announced it was adding fediverse integrations with 400 more Flipboard creators and introducing fediverse notifications inside the Flipboard app itself.

In addition to the ability to post content shared into the fediverse from other services, the update will allow Flipboard users to see their new followers and other activity surrounding the content they share directly within the Flipboard app. That follows the addition last year of a Mastodon integration to the app, replacing Twitter, and the addition of support for ActivityPub, the social networking protocol that powers the open source, decentralized social networks including but not limited to Mastodon.

Then in February, Flipboard announced it would begin to add its creators and their social magazines to the fediverse as well. What this means is that the curated magazines of links and other social posts which its creators usually share within the Flipboard app will now reach a wider audience. Publishing partners like Flipboard, along with their native ActivityPub feeds, helped their creators' posts and links spread throughout the broader fediverse, so they might be found by Mastodon users and others on federated social apps. That initial push toward federation has started with 1,000 Flipboard magazines and today grows with 400 more. Altogether, Flipboard reports, more than 11,000 curated Flipboard magazines are available to federated social networking users.

"This is a major step toward fully federating our platform," said Flipboard CEO Mike McCue in an announcement. "We're not just making curated content on Flipboard viewable, but enabling two-way communication so users can see activity and engage with fediverse communities. Personally, it has made my curation even more exciting as I know it's reaching new people who may share my interests."

Expanded set of accounts includes public accounts with one or two public magazines that have activity curated in the past 30 days and do not have any trust and safety violations. They've also participated in Flipboard community programs. Accounts will be alerted to their federated status via email.

Flipboard is working towards federating by default its users' accounts, although people will be able to "unfederate" by toggleing off the "Federate" button in their Flipboard settings.

More integrated fediverse experience will come in the form of a few more features for the company's own app. Arriving Thursday with version 4.3.25, Flipboard users will have access to their new fediverse followers in their Flipboard profile, and Flipboard notifications will now include fediverse reactions and conversations.
 
This notification window will now contain three sections: Replies, Activity and News. In Replies, users will see and respond to posts from people both on Flipboard and in the fediverse, as well as any @mentions by any other fediverse users. When they respond, that reply is also sent back into the fediverse, more of a client app for the fediverse than it was before. An Activity tab will appear, which will include the likes, follows and boosts - the fediverse's version of the retweet - among Flipboard activities. The News section - formerly called Content - should break news and other selections by Flipboard's editorial team.

They had already begun curating content for fediverse users across a handful of "news desks"-dedicated fediverse accounts directing users to interesting articles and links across topics. There is a broader news desk, plus those dedicated to Tech, Culture and Science. This existing curation can help fuel the newly rebranded News section in the Flipboard app.