A timeline to bring them all together

The launch of Tapestry in early February has solidified a new category of apps — ones that attempt to create a unified timeline from different sources that, by their very nature, are like oil and water.

Tapestry joins a handful of other recent apps¹ — Feeeed, the new Reeder, and Flipboard’s Surf — in tackling the main issue of decentralized social platforms, which is… well, decentralization itself.

The idea is pretty cool: it doesn’t matter if the people you follow are on Bluesky or Mastodon. With one of these timeline apps, you can keep up with them all at once on a single interface. It’s like centralizing the new social internet, but it’s done at the individual level rather than the platform level.

Even though protocols like AT and ActivityPub allow for more robust implementations, all these apps still rely on the good old, tried-and-true RSS². Besides its simplicity, RSS has the added bonus of covering more sources: blogs, YouTube channels, Reddit communities, forums like Hacker News — all of which offer RSS feeds.

Aside from Tapestry, I’ve taken a look at the other three, and I’ve been using Feeeed (with four e’s) daily on my phone. Created by Nate Parrott, it’s a free app that I believe offers the best user experience.

I really like how the content is presented — each piece comes in a distinct card style — and the way the app opens Reddit posts and discussions in a “reader mode,” meaning a custom layout without the ads and other extras that usually weigh down web pages.

Feeeed leans more toward that “newspaper front page” vibe that so many earlier apps, like Flipboard (the owner of Surf), have been trying for decades without much success.

I think a big part of that is due to the way it handles source curation. In Feeeed’s case, it’s completely manual, with at most a few default source suggestions. There’s just one content-sorting algorithm for the sources you’re already subscribed to — and you can even switch it out for a simple chronological order.

For sites with a high volume of updates — like newspapers, popular blogs, or active Reddit communities — Feeeed takes the edge off FOMO, that constant urge to keep up with everything. It presents updates without overwhelming your senses, though I can’t say for sure whether I’m missing out on anything.

Another cool thing is that each session has a definite end, without doomscrolling, and there’s a favorites section so you don’t lose track of interesting content.

Silvio Rizzi, the creator of Reeder, got flak at the app’s launch for not having an unread items counter. That feature eventually appeared, but I think the developer’s initial instinct was spot on. By leaving out unread counts, these timeline apps treat information as a flow rather than a to-do list. Missed something? No worries. If it’s really important, it’ll pop up through another source you follow.

Since they don’t support actions like liking, replying, or reposting, these timeline apps aren’t meant to replace social network apps or even RSS feed aggregators. For me, at least, Feeeed has become a small but pleasant addition to my reading routine — a little dose of updates when I’m off duty, without the risk of getting lost in an endless “For You” feed. Not indispensable, but nice to have.

I can’t say for sure whether I’ll stick with Feeeed or any of these other apps in the long run. And I’m also not sure there’s a huge market for them. The potential audience is pretty small: people who use more than one alternative social platform and who aren’t satisfied with the official or third-party apps. How many people fit that bill? I’m not sure, but if you do, now might be the perfect time to check these apps out.