Tech veteran Mike McKue is looking at another kind of internet opening where the algorithm doesn't call shots. McCue, CEO of internet company Flipboard, challenges social media attention and bets that humans, not machines, should curate online experiences.
Thirty years ago, as Vice President of Technology for groundbreaking high-tech company Netscape, McCue helped democratize information access through the World Wide Web. Now, he has placed the company's new surf browser as part of the growth of the so-called decentralized social media options community, along with emerging platforms such as Bluesky and Mastodon.
Timing is coincidental as online publishers suffer from old problems and new threats. For years, they have been worried that internet intermediaries (major platforms like Facebook and Tiktok) are weakening their relationships with people who read and watch their material. Currently, publishers face another problem. This is a new AI system that can completely eliminate these links with your audience.
Surf offers a window into a quiet technology movement that reflects the early days of the World Wide Web. McKue has created a potential pathway for media companies to build direct relationships with readers using several internet technical standards aimed at driving the growth of a new kind of social media.
In contrast to the current social web, dominated by several large technology companies, the new software protocols may seem a little unstable for now. However, Internet users allow information to be communicated and shared without relying on a single centralized service.
One of the new technology standards is known as ActivityPub. Social media platforms using protocols can communicate with each other, allowing users on different networks to interact seamlessly.
ActivityPub was officially created in 2018 by the World Wide Web Consortium, a technical standards production organization. The standard initially attracted a small amount of interest. However, the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, now known as X, in 2022, sparked the departure of users and publishers looking for alternatives.
SURF allows phones, tablets, and personal computer users to curate feeds from a variety of sources, resulting in a single view in a dashboard-like view. You can also publish your personal curated collection of information.
Surf is still being personally tested by McCue's small company, which will be free to offer the program later this year. However, while the open social movement is still small, it has attracted attention every time there are destructive events such as Musk's Twitter purchase.
Decentralized social media gained great momentum in 2023 when META adopted X-competitor Thread's ActivityPub Standard and later announced plans to connect with other ActivityPub-based services. What McCue calls “Open Social Web” already has over 300 million participants, most of whom are now thread users of meta.
The goal of sharing lead users from Silos has accelerated the recent success of Bluesky, launched in 2023 by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. It is built on a rival standard known as the AT protocol, but a bridge is built between the two protocols.
“Everyone copies each other's functions in walled gardens, but now innovation is decentralized around human connections,” McKue said in an interview.
McKue, 56, co-founded Flipboard in 2010 as a digital news aggregator. He has built an early-existing career to leverage changes in internet technology. He launched paper software to allow 3D information to be visually displayed on a web browser, and in 1996 he sold the company to Netscape for $20 million.
In 1999 he co-founded Telme Networks, a pioneering effort to create what was known as the “voice browser” and to allow internet information to be received over the phone. The company was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for rumors of $800 million.
One of the most important possibilities of the open social web is allowing businesses to move away from invasive advertising, McCue said. He describes the alternative as a “context” advert for a particular interest, not an individual. For example, ads can be posted to web feeds focusing on topics such as backpacking and fashion.
“The concept of creating an audience, rather than chasing traffic, is something we've been exploring,” said Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of Verge, a popular news and media website. “ActivityPub may encourage that by enabling more direct and meaningful engagement with readers.”
In addition to the decision that Meta is based on ActivityPub, news organizations such as Bloomberg and the BBC have begun experimenting with technology, as well as blog platforms such as Medium, WordPress and Ghost.
ActivityPub has also led to a wave of startup efforts such as Mastodon, a microblog service with startups such as a network of over 14,000 host computers with over 14 million accounts connected, and a distributed service that offers similar functionality to Instagram and YouTube.
For decades, Google's Internet search advantage has been the driving force behind content creation and distribution. However, as Google invested in AI summary for generation-response to user queries, the window of opportunity for chatbots and discovery tools of all kinds has made the need more urgent.
That is far from the very early roots of the World Wide Web in the work of Theodor M. Nelson, a Harvard graduate student in 1961. He invented the concept of hypertext. This was later adopted as the fundamental structure of the World Wide Web. Designers of new open social web services believe their alternatives are taking a step back towards the original ideals of the Internet.
“It goes back to the original principles that began as decentralized the Internet,” says Eugen Rochko, inventor of Mastodon, an open-source social networking platform that allows users to join independently operated servers while connecting via a global network.
The transition from a centralized model to a distributed model requires cultural change for both publishers and audiences.
“We're a great deal,” said Mike Godwin, a lawyer known for his work on Internet rights and digital culture. “But these are the kind of new problems we should face and are what comes with genuine innovation.”
Despite these challenges, the enthusiasm among early adopters reminds us of the Internet pioneering of the first few years of the World Wide Web.
“The energy around ActivityPub reminds me of the early days of the web,” Nelson said in a recent interview, “Everything seemed possible, and innovation was everywhere.”
