A technology industry veteran, Mike McCue sees an opening for another type of internet where algorithms do not call shots. Mr. McCue, chief executive of the Flipboard Internet Company, is challenging the automated social media control in our attention, betting that people, not cars, should cure online experiences.
Three decades ago, as Vice President of Technology at the Netscape Basic Technology Company, Mr. McCue helped democratize the introduction of information through the World Wide Web. Now, he is positioning his new company’s new browser as part of a growing community of so -called decentralized social media options, along with developing platforms such as Bluesky and Mastodon.
Time can be strong, as online publishers struggle with an old problem and a new threat. For years, they have worried that internet intermediaries – big platforms like Facebook and Tiktok – have weakened their connections with people who read or view their material. Now publishers face another publication: new systems of one that can fully eliminate those ties of disruption with their audience.
Surf offers a window in a smooth technological movement echoing in the early days of the wider world network. With the help of some internet technical standards that aim to encourage the growth of a new type of social media, Mr. McCue has created a possible way where media companies can establish direct relationships with readers.
In contrast to the current social network, which prevails by some major technological companies, new software protocols may look a little profitable for now. But they make it possible for internet users to communicate and share information without relying on a single centralized service.
One of the new technical standards is known as activity. Social media platforms using the protocol can talk to each other, allowing users on different networks to interact smoothly – similar to how the email works in different providers.
Actipub was officialized in 2018 by the World Wide Web Consortium, a technology standards organization. The standard initially attracted little interest. But the purchase of Elon Musk’s Twitter, now known as X, in 2022 has created an exodus of users and publishers looking for alternatives.
Surf allows phone users, tablets and personal computer to cure resources from a variety of sources to a single appearance like dashboard. It will also allow them to publish personally curated collections of information.
Surf is still being tested privately by Mr. McCue’s small company, which plans to offer the program freely later this year. However, while the open social movement is still small, it has attracted attention whenever there is a divisive event such as the acquisition of Mr Musk’s Twitter.
Decentralized social media gained an important moment in 2023 when Meta approved the standard of activity for his X, Threads competition, and later announced plans to connect with other ActivityPub -based services. What Mr. McCue calls “Open Social Web” already has more than 300 million participants, he estimated, and most of them are now users of Meta Threads.
The common goal of Silos’s user leadership accelerated with Bluesky’s latest success, which Twitter Jack Doresey co -founder began in 2023. Although built on a rival standard known as At Protocol, a bridge has already been built between two protocols to enable social media services to be linked.
“Everyone has just copied each other’s features in wall gardens, but now the innovation will become decentralized around the human connection,” said Mr. McCue in an interview.
Mr. McCue, 56, co-founded Flipboard as a digital news aggregator in 2010. He has made a career to be in the beginning to exploit changes in internet technologies. He began the paper software to make it possible to visually display 3-D information on the web browsers and then sold the Netscape company for $ 20 million in 1996.
In 1999 he co-founded Tellme Networks, a pioneer attempt to create what was described as a “voice browser” and enable receiving information online. That company was sold in Microsoft in 2007 for $ 800 million.
One of the most significant potentials of the open social network is that it will allow companies to leave invasive advertising. McCue. He describes the alternative as “contextual” advertising for special interests than individuals. For example, advertising can be posted on online resources focused on topics such as back or fashion.
“The notion of creating an audience rather than following traffic is something we have explored,” said Nilay Patel, editor -in -chief of The Verge, a well -known news and media page. “Activity can facilitate this by allowing a more direct and significant engagement with our readers.”
In addition to the meta decision on the topics of the topics in ActityPub, news organizations like Bloomberg and BBC have begun experimenting with technology, such as blogs such as medium, WordPress and Ghost.
Actipub has also led to a wave of efforts to start such as mastodon, a microblogging service that now has more than 14 million accounts connected by a network of over 14,000 hosts, as well as beginners such as pixelfed and peertube, scattered services that provide similar Instagram and YouTube features.
For decades, the predominance of Google’s Internet search has been behind the creation and distribution of content. But while Google has invested in Generation-Ai collection for answers to user questions, a window of opportunities for all types of detection tools in addition to chatbots has made the need for more urgent alternatives.
This is a cry from the early roots of the world network in Theodor M. Nelson’s work, who, while a Harvard graduate student in 1961, noticed that the text on the first computer monitors could move and that the writing no longer needed to be linear. He invented the concept of hypertext, which was later adopted as the basic structure of the broad world network. Designers of new open social services online believe that their alternative is a step back towards the original internet ideals.
“It turns into original principles where the Internet began as decentralized,” said Eugen Rochko, the inventor of Mastodon, an open -source social networking platform that allows users to join with independently operated servers while connecting through a global network.
The transition from centralized to decentralized models will require a cultural shift between publishers and the audience.
“There are significant questions of products to solve, such as ways to address moderation and detection of content in a decentralized environment,” said Mike Godwin, a lawyer known for his work on internet rights and digital culture. “But these are the types of new problems we have to face, those that come with genuine innovation.”
Despite these challenges, enthusiasm among early adopters recalls some online pioneers of the World Wide Web.
“Energy about actrityPub reminds me of the first days of the web,” said Mr. Nelson in a recent interview, “where everything seemed possible, and the innovation was about every corner.”