A new app called Tapestry, which launched Tuesday, aggregates and organizes information from across the web and social networks in a single place. It is, in some ways, like this generation’s FriendFeed, for those old enough to remember the earlier attempt from the Web 2.0 era to aggregate feeds and social media updates in a single destination for discovery and discussion.
But while FriendFeed encouraged discussions on-site, building a social network of its own — and ultimately attracting an acquisition by Facebook — Tapestry works better as a reader.
The problem the app addresses is one that’s becoming more common as the open social web grows: In order to keep up, people have to use tons of services and do so much app-switching.
Amid a flurry of development that includes the growing social networks Bluesky and Mastodon, designed to rival the tech giants with open source software and decentralized power structures, there is also the challenge of keeping up with friends and followers who have now scattered across numerous places after leaving X’s and Meta’s platforms.
Addressing this problem is Tapestry’s main draw but this could, for the time being, also limit the app’s appeal beyond the early-adopter crowd.
A unified app
Today, most people already have processes, workflows, and preferred apps they use to keep up with news sites, blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos from favorite creators. Tapestry proposes to change that. It offers a single place to check for these updates alongside those from other social networks you may use, like Bluesky, Mastodon, Tumblr, and others.
Built by the team that designed one of the original third-party Twitter clients, Twitterrific, Tapestry proposes to introduce a new type of timeline, much like Twitter’s, where all updates scroll by. There are also additional, more advanced tools you can use to configure that timeline — like selecting which content to mute and which to “muffle,” or collapse — so you can opt to view it if desired while limiting screen space.
The latter can be used to improve both the aesthetics and the vibe of your timeline. For instance, you may want to muffle political topics so they don’t overwhelm your screen as you scroll or muffle spoilers of your favorite TV shows.
After adding the social accounts, RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts, and more that you want to view within Tapestry, you can then set up your timeline, as well as additional timelines, offering a custom view of this information. For instance, you could have a timeline focused only on Apple news, blogs, and podcasts, or one for your social networks, like Bluesky and Mastodon.
To get the best use out of Tapestry, you’ll have to give a lot of thought to the type of information and updates you want to track and how you’d like to see them organized. Viewing everything in a single feed can be noisy because of all the social app updates. Your timelines are essentially Tapestry’s version of custom feeds (similar to Bluesky’s feeds, but with the ability to pull from multiple services, not just one). That means you’ll be in the job of feed creator, not just consumer — at least until a more robust developer ecosystem arrives.
Feeds and Connectors
While it feels like Tapestry is trying to scratch an itch that open social web early adopters may now have, its aggregation of all your content into timelines can feel overcomplicated at times, and some of its user interface choices need more polish.
For instance, Tapestry defaults to opening feeds in-app when you choose the option to “open original” from the “more” (three-dot) menu on individual posts.
Also, tucking away the ability to engage with the original content with an extra tap doesn’t make this the best app for people who like to quickly participate in social conversations as they scroll. If you open items in-app, you’ll need to log in to the social network to engage. You’ll likely want to set this to open feeds in “Safari” so Tapestry opens the associated iOS app directly (like Bluesky) where you can like, reply, or repost.
Unfortunately, that means Tapestry isn’t really solving the need to maintain multiple accounts across multiple apps.
Another design choice that could be confusing involves the app’s two sections where you can add sources. One is called “Feeds” and another is called “Connectors.” The former lets you add “content that appears in your timeline,” and the latter is meant to “create feeds that populate your timeline.” (If you’re scratching your head at those descriptions, you’re not alone. The app needs to offer more of an explanation.)
As it turns out, Connectors are meant to work more like plug-ins or add-ons. They run in a JavaScript sandbox and will be built by a community of third-party developers who want to extend the Tapestry ecosystem with new feeds of their own. Unfortunately, these Connectors can’t include sources like Facebook, Instagram, X, or others that don’t offer open feeds.
An extensible app is a clever idea but one that could have been pushed further down the project’s roadmap. Initially, the team should focus on testing the premise that users want to view information from across the web, not just the social web, as “timelines” in the first place. Do users want RSS, podcasts, social media, and other services mixed, instead of using separate apps?
A transitional step or the future?
Tapestry isn’t the only one that’s thinking about putting users in control of their feeds and sources for news and information.
Newer social apps like Bluesky and even Meta’s Threads introduced the concept of custom feeds, while startups like Graze offer advanced feed-building tools, and Flipboard introduced a new app called Surf for building custom feeds from across services. Unlike Tapestry’s, Surf’s user interface lets you view feeds that can be filtered to be viewed in different formats — watch, read, or listen — or you can opt to see everything combined into one, depending on which tab you select.
Other apps like Feeeed and Reeder have also emerged to address similar issues around feed consumption.
One problem these solutions aim to address is that today’s open social networks work on different protocols. Mastodon, Pixelfed, and others use ActivityPub, and Bluesky and a growing number of clients are building on its underlying protocol, AT Protocol. Meanwhile, older news sites, blogs, and podcasts distribute their updates across the open protocol RSS.
Currently, bridges are being built to connect networks like Bluesky and Mastodon, social apps like Threads are integrating with ActivityPub, while WordPress blogs and newsletter platforms like Ghost are working to join the open social web known as the fediverse, via ActivityPub.
That leaves us in a transitional period where you can’t just pick your preferred app and expect to see it all.
Instead, we’re being given tools to combine feeds and sources however we see fit. But some of these efforts feel like temporary measures as a new, more open internet — where everything eventually connects — is still being built.
