A Tapestry review, an application driven by the growing Open website

A new application called Tapestrywhich launched on Tuesday, added and organizes information from the entire website and social networks in one place. It is, in some way, as the time of friends of this generation, for those older enough to remember the previous attempt of the era of the web 2.0 until adding food and updates of social networks in a single destination for the discovery and the discussion.

But although Friendfeed encouraged discussions on the site, building an own social network, and finally attracting a facebook acquisition, Tapestry works better as a reader.

The problem addressed by the application is one that is becoming more common as the open social network grows: to keep up, people have to use tons of services and make a lot of change of applications.

In the midst of a large amount of development that includes the growing Bluesky and Mastodon social networks, designed to rival technological giants with open source software and decentralized power structures, there is also the challenge of keeping up with friends and followers that now now They have dispersed in numerous places later. Leaving the x and Meta platforms.

Addressing this problem is Tapestry's main raffle, but this could, at the moment, also limit the attractiveness of the application beyond the multitude of early adopters.

A unified application

Today, most people already have processes, workflows and preferred applications that they use to keep up with news, podcasts and YouTube videos of the favorite creators. Tapestry proposes to change that. It offers a single place to verify these updates together with those of other social networks that you can use, such as Bluesky, Mastodon, Tumblr and others.

Built by the team that designed one of the original twitter clients of third parties, Twitterrific, Tapestry proposes to introduce a new type of timeline, as well as twitter, where all updates move. There are also additional and more advanced tools that you can use to configure that timeline, such as selecting what content silence and what to “cushion” or collapse, so you can choose to see if you wish when you limit the screen of the screen.

The latter can be used to improve both the aesthetics and the atmosphere of its timeline. For example, you may want to cushion the political issues so that they do not overwhelm your screen while moving or cushion the spoilers of your favorite television programs.

After adding social accounts, RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts and more you want to see within Tapestry, you can configure your timeline, as well as additional timelines, offering a personalized view of this information. For example, it could have a timeline focused only on Apple News, blogs and podcasts, or one for their social networks, such as Bluesky and Mastodon.

To get the best use of Tapestry, you will have to think a lot about the type of information and updates you want to track and how you would like to see them organized. Seeing everything in a single diet can be noisy due to all social applications updates. Its timelines are essentially the tapestry version of custom Feeds (similar to Bluesky feeds, but with the ability to extract from multiple services, not just one). That means that he will be at Feed Creator's work, not only to the consumer, at least until a more robust developer ecosystem arrives.

Food and connectors

While it seems that Tapestry is trying to scratch a itching that can now have the first users of the social network, their aggregation of all its installment content can feel overlying sometimes, and some of their user interface options need more polished.

For example, Tapestry is predetermined to open food in the application when you choose the “original open” option in the “more” (three points) menu in individual publications.

In addition, removing the ability to interact with the original content with an additional touch does not make this the best application for the people who like to participate quickly in social conversations as they move. If you open items in the application, you must log in to the social network to participate. You are likely to configure this in open foods in “safari”, so the tapestry opens the iOS application directly associated (such as Bluesky) where you may like, respond or publish again.

Unfortunately, that means that Tapestry is not really solving the need to keep multiple accounts in multiple applications.

Another design option that could be confused implies the two sections of the application where you can add sources. One is called “feeds” and another is called “connectors.” The first allows you to add “content that appears in your timeline”, and the second is intended to “create foods that fill your timeline.” (If you are scratching your head before those descriptions, you are not alone. The application must offer more explanation).

As a result, the connectors are intended to work more as supplements or accessories. They run in a JavaScript Sandbox and will be built by a community of third -party developers who wish to extend the tapestry ecosystem with new foods. Unfortunately, these connectors cannot include sources such as facebook, instagram, x or others that do not offer open foods.

An extensible application is an intelligent idea, but that could have been pushed below in the project of the project. Initially, the team must focus on proving the premise that users want To see information from the entire website, not only the social website, such as “deadlines” in the first place. Users want RSS, podcasts, social networks and other mixed services, instead of using separate applications?

A transition step or the future?

Tapestry is not the only one who is thinking of putting users in control of their feeds and sources for news and information.

The newest social applications such as Bluesky and even the finishing threads introduced the concept of custom foods, while new companies such as Graze offer advanced tools for food construction, and Flipboard introduced a new application called Surf to build custom foods of all services. Unlike Tapestry user interface, Surf allows you to see the foods that can be filtered to be seen in different formats (clock, read or listen, or you can choose to see everything combined in one, depending on which tab select.

Other applications such as Feeeed and Reeder have also emerged to address similar problems around food consumption.

A problem that these solutions aim to address is that today's open social networks work in different protocols. Mastodon, Pixed and others use Pub activityand Bluesky and a growing number of clients are based on their underlying protocol, In the protocol. Meanwhile, the news, blogs and older podcasts distribute their updates in the open protocol RSS.

Currently, bridges are being built to connect networks such as Bluesky and Mastodon, social applications such as threads are being integrated with Activitypub, while WordPress blogs and bulletin platforms like Ghost are working to join the known social network known as Fediverse, through Activitypub.

That leaves us in a period of transition in which you cannot choose its preferred application and expect to see everything.

On the other hand, we are given tools to combine food and fountains, however, we consider it adequate. But some of these efforts feel as temporary measures as a new and more open Internet, where everything finally connects, it is still being built.