6 hours ago
3
A new app called Tapestry promising to unify social media, news, and RSS in one place, is nearing completion. Designed by Iconfactory, the same team that created the third-party Twitter client Twitterific back in the day, Tapestry was unveiled at the beginning of the year as a tool that could better organize today’s fragmented online media, allowing users to track their favorite blogs, news sites, and social networks from a single app. This week, the company announced an update on Tapestry’s progress, saying that it planned to officially launch the app to the public in “early 2025.”
“Obviously the sooner the better, but there’s still some important work to be done and bugs to be squashed,” the update on the project’s Patreon page noted.
Instead of raising from outside investors, Iconfactory has been crowdfunding Tapestry’s development. To date, over 3360 backers pledged north of $177,800 to bring the app to life.
The app will appeal to people who are tired of trying to keep up with multiple sites, blogs, and social media services by constantly opening new browser tabs and switching apps. It also capitalizes users being frustrated that there are now too many Twitter clones.
Following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now called X, there has been an explosion of interest in new Twitter-like services, including apps like Mastodon and Bluesky, built on open protocols, and Meta’s Threads, which is working to integrate with ActivityPub, the same protocol powering Mastodon. (Other smaller apps like T2/Pebble, Post, and Cohost, have since shut down.)
As a result of these experiments in a more open social web, there’s potential for new user experiences designed to browse these different services, app developers believe.
Just this week Flipboard launched its own take on what a browser for the open web should look like, with the launch of an app called Surf that lets you track RSS, Bluesky, and Mastodon content in a single app.
It’s not the only company thinking about this.
Besides Iconfactory, the developer behind the popular Mac and iOS newsreader Reeder, Silvio Rizzi, reinvented his app to expand beyond RSS to include support for other social services, like Mastodon, Bluesky, YouTube, Reddit, and others. Another indie app called Feeeed also expanded this year to allow users to track RSS, newsletters, Mastodon, Tumblr, Reddit, and others. And this week, Feeeed added support for Bluesky, too. Plus, an app called Openvibe lets you browse Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads in one place.
Despite their similar premises, each app offers a different user interface and experience. While Reeder still look and feels much like an RSS reader, others seem more like social experiences of their own.
Tapestry is interesting as it tries to straddle both worlds, allowing users to track their favorite websites and blogs, or even import RSS feeds en masse via an OPML file, while also connecting to a variety of social sources. Today, the beta version of the app supports Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as webcomics, social apps like Reddit, Tumblr, and YouTube as well as sources for weather and earthquake alerts — events X is still often used to track.
However, Tapestry isn’t just about cramming everything into one interface. Its real strength lies in allowing people to create their own custom feeds (or “timelines”) where they can pick and choose which sources — like social sites, websites, blogs, podcasts and more — are included. You can also use tools like “mute” and “muffle,” borrowed from Twitterific, to configure whether or not posts with certain keywords are blocked entirely or collapsed (muffled) when shown.
There are a number of other customization tools that will appeal to power users who like to build feeds, too.
However, one point of confusion with the current build is that Tapestry separates sources (like RSS feeds or social apps) into two sections called “feeds” and “connectors” — the former to fill your timeline with content and the latter to create other feeds to populate your timeline. Some services, like Mastodon and Bluesky, can appear in both sections if you add them. We’d prefer a combined section just called “sources.”
Still, it’s easy to see how you might use Tapestry to keep up with multiple social services alongside breaking news and new posts from your favorite sources, as an alternative to browsing X.
Iconfactory hasn’t yet shared an exact launch date for Tapestry, but the app will generate revenue by way of monthly and annual subscriptions.
English (US) ·