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Flipboard<\/a>, the news magazine software company that has more recently invested<\/a> in the open social web<\/a> \u2014 the umbrella term for social platforms that let users, not one company, control their own data and audience \u2014 is making another big bet on that ecosystem. The company on Wednesday announced it\u2019s acquiring<\/a> the Portland-based feed-building startup Graze<\/a>, which has been working to monetize the open social web by allowing feed creators to support themselves via ads. <\/p>\n Graze<\/a> today\u00a0offers tools to build, customize, publish, and manage<\/a>\u00a0Bluesky feeds, which are curated post streams that users can set as their home feed, pin for quick access, or pull into other apps built on Bluesky\u2019s AT Protocol (an open technical standard that lets different apps share the same social network). Since launching 21 months ago, Graze has sent over 41 billion posts to some 12 million people, the company says<\/a>.<\/p>\n The idea is that curators and communities can build their own feeds to turn their expertise into income. Most importantly, the ads are not based on the data-tracking model that relies on following individual users across the web, and which open social web supporters call the \u201csurveillance ecosystem.\u201d Instead, they\u2019re contextual. That is, if a brand wants to target ads to game developers, it can buy a placement in a feed run by members of that community. What\u2019s more, the feed\u2019s curator can pick and choose which ads they want to run.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the ad revenue is split 70\/30 with Graze, with the majority of the revenue going to the feed\u2019s creator. At present, Graze has north of 7,000 feeds on its platform, and around 60% of its traffic is monetized. <\/p>\n In an interview with TechCrunch, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue praised the adtech involved, saying that \u201cit doesn\u2019t have to surveil anybody, and it doesn\u2019t have to violate people\u2019s privacy\u2026so that\u2019s a really fantastic vision. And the key thing is that all the economics aren\u2019t just going to one player.\u201d <\/p>\n The ad revenue,\u201d he added, \u201cis being shared with the feed builder.\u201d<\/p>\n Flipboard had been using Graze\u2019s feed-building technology in its new app, Surf,<\/a> which led to the two companies working more closely together. It turned out that the outfits shared a vision for how the open social ecosystem could grow, but they were also duplicating each other\u2019s work.<\/p>\n Graze co-founder and CEO Devin Gaffney<\/a> realized things could move faster with a partner that already had the infrastructure he needed \u2014 in this case, Flipboard\u2019s existing relationships with advertisers.<\/p>\n Post-acquisition, Flipboard will continue to use Graze\u2019s technology and enable its users to build feeds themselves, which will expand beyond the Bluesky app to everything running on the AT Protocol, Flipboard\u2019s own app included.<\/p>\n McCue noted that in many cases, the feed builders are people who are building their own communities on the open web, but their members aren\u2019t necessarily thinking of it in the same way.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t think of it as, like, \u2018I\u2019m joining Bluesky\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m joining the social web, the open social web.\u2019 They just think I\u2019m joining The Tea<\/a> because \u2018I care about women\u2019s sports,\u2019\u201d he said, referencing a feed from one of the communities on Surf that\u2019s called Bet on Her<\/a>.<\/p>\n Flipboard isn\u2019t disclosing the acquisition\u2019s terms, but this was a small deal, as Graze had only raised $1 million at the beginning of 2025 and has just two team members. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n