Six Reasons Why Political Pundits On Threads Should Flip For Flipboard
It is no open secret that Threads (owned by Meta) has throttled political posts for business reasons. Despite the hate from political pundits, Meta's strategy of minimizing political content is working as Threads seems to be growing at a healthy clip.
Threads now has almost 275M monthly actives and more than 1M daily sign-ups 🔥 (via @zuck@threads.net on Threads
With a million daily signups, Threads might surpass X (formally Twitter) despite throttling political content.
As a replacement for Twitter, Threads needs to facilitate all types of trending discussions, and restricting the reach and presence of certain topics seems to run counter to this. Though even then, 275 million is significant, and if it can maintain its current growth rate of a million more sign-ups per day (also noted by Zuckerberg in today's earning call), that would mean that Threads will be on track to challenge X's monthly active user count by around June next year. (via @mattnavarra@threads.net on Social Media Today)
Some political pundits have advocated abandoning the largest ActivityPub platform for either established centralized platforms (like YouTube) or embracing rival decentralized protocols (like BlueSky via AT Protocol or Nostr).
However, instead of abandoning a mainstream platform, here are six reasons why it would be wiser for political pundits to embrace Flipboard instead—all the while courting Threads on the side.
Image Credit: Flipboard
Politics Is Celebrated On Flipboard
Unlike Threads, Flipboard celebrates politics. The platform hosts numerous political discussions, including heated debates on who should be the next President of the United States 🇺🇸 (among other political content).
Here is a sample of some of the political content I see on Flipboard from my account on both the web and within the app.
Flipboard does not shy away from political content; it treats it like any other information on its site. This means that political pundits do not have to fear being throttled by an AI algorithm for embracing a political view.
Image Credit: Flipboard
Large Community
Although Flipboard is not growing as fast as Threads, they are still a heavyweight within the Fediverse.
One thing that I've heard time and time again is that partners are looking for ways to diversify their referral traffic sources, to be less dependent on the duopoly of Google and Facebook. With 145 million monthly active users globally, Flipboard doesn't match the size of the largest social platforms, but we help move the needle because people come to Flipboard to catch up on the things they are most interested in. (Flipboard)
If there is one thing political pundits care about, it is audience size. They aim to influence the masses in a particular direction, which is much harder to do on an emerging niche platform than on an established player.
While this might make Flipboard a superior option over smaller platforms, Flipboard has another advantage that makes it more appealing than more prominent centralized players.
Fediverse Friendly
Even though Flipboard has a Mastodon instance (Flipboard.social), the company is embracing the Fediverse on Flipboard.com itself.
Unlike Threads, which made Fediverse sharing opt-in, Flipboard decided to make Fediverse sharing opt-out, allowing people will be able to follow political pundits from other platforms—including (in the future) Threads.
This means pundits will not have to beg people to activate ActivityPub on their accounts as they will be on by default.
Note: Flipboard is still beta testing Fediverse integration, although you can request early access by contacting the company here.
Image Credit: Flipboard on Apple App Store
An Actual iPad App
People have been begging Meta for many months to release a native iPad app for Threads, but despite our pleas, the company decided to create a Progressive Web App instead.
On the other hand, Flipboard boasts a beautiful iPad app that it has supported for years.
You can download the iPad app on the App Store, but if you prefer visiting Flipboard on the web, that option is also available on Flipboard.com.
RSS For The Win
Meta has avoided adding Really Simply Syndication or RSS feeds to its various social platforms, including Threads, for unknown reasons.
On the other hand, Flipboard boasts RSS feeds, allowing users to creatively share their content on different platforms, blogs, or social networks.
For example, I use Fedica to automatically post interesting articles I share on Flipboard to my Mastodon account (@darnell@one.darnell.one) & my Threads account (@darnell@threads.net).
Whenever I share content from Flipboard via @FedicaHQ@m.fedica.com, I tag my Fediverse-enabled Flipboard handle (@darnell@flipboard.com). This allows accounts with ActivityPub enabled to follow my adventures from their preferred platform.
Political pundits would be wise to do the same, as it would allow them to take advantage of Threads' platform (despite the throttling) and leverage Flipboard's community for a total combined reach of 420 million active users.
Image Credit: PC Magazine
Curation Sensation
Last but not least, Flipboard allows users to curate posts via Magazines, a feature I have yet to see eloquently replicated on any other social platform.
Public Magazines are a great way to build a presence on Flipboard. When you create a Magazine, others can follow it and, as you add more stories to the Magazine, your followers will see your recommendations in their For You feed. Additionally, when you add stories to your Magazine, it acts as a signal to the Flipboard ecosystem and increases the opportunity for your recommended content to be discovered by others. Therefore, when you curate a public Magazine not only do you and your Flipboard followers benefit, but you'll be improving the experience for everyone. [...]
Whether your interests lie in gardening, cryptocurrency, or anything in between, you can use Flipboard to collect and organize stories for yourself or for others. The beautiful layout and easy access makes Magazines fun to create and a powerful tool for sharing ideas and collaborating. (Inside Flipboard)
Pundits can use the power of Flipboard magazines to curate posts that better address their follower's interests. Instead of just a firehose of political information, pundits can create magazines based upon certain politicians, regional politics, issues, etcetera, which will help users sift the signal through the noise.
As a bonus, these magazines are federated so that users can follow your specific magazines from ActivityPub-enabled accounts. For example, my Flipboard followers can choose to follow everything on my main Flipboard account, or they can follow my specific magazines:
This feature is unique to Flipboard (at least within the Fediverse), & pundits may find Flipboard magazines more appealing than current alternatives.
Use Flipboard & Threads‽
For better or worse, Threads will not disappear anytime soon, despite the platform's preference of avoiding politics.
Instead of embracing another platform on another protocol and hoping followers will jump ship, pundits could simply open a Flipboard account, share their content with Threads (their current community), and expand their reach on a new platform within the Fediverse.
This would reduce follower friction. When (not if) Threads allows users to follow ActivityPub accounts on other domains, Pundits will reap the benefits of both platforms (as well as hundreds of others within the Fediverse).
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