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Flock Web browser attempts to unify access to multiple social networks

Wednesday, May 07, 2008 - 03:11 PM EST

"In the increasingly complex world of online social networking, keeping track of multiple accounts across many networks is a difficult task. A new Web browser, Flock, attempts to unify access to many social networks, including Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Photobucket, Picasa, Livejournal, and Blogger," Tim Barribeau reports for Technology Review.

"Flock was launched in November 2007 and is growing fast. CEO Shawn Hardin projects that, with more than one million downloads to date, Flock will have tens of millions of users by 2009," Barribeau reports.

"Flock's revenue comes primarily from Yahoo, in exchange for making the search engine the browser default. This is a similar model to one used by Firefox, which had a revenue of $66.9 million in 2006, of which 90 percent was from search-engine royalties," Barribeau reports.

"Flock functions like a standard browser most of the time, with a few added functions that gear it toward social networking... A central theme running through all the utilities in Flock is the ability to share information with friends," Barribeau reports.

Full review here.

More Flock info and download link here.

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May 07, 08 - 02:26 pm Comment from: Banjo

Flockin' aye

May 07, 08 - 03:02 pm Comment from: DJ Jac

I realIy like the idea of the Flock browser, so I tried it two weeks ago.
Flock was so slow it was unusable. I uninstalled it immediately.

"...Flock, attempts to unify access to many social networks, including Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Photobucket, Picasa, Livejournal, and Blogger..."
- Maybe that's a bigger mouthful than Flock's coders can chew at this time.

May 07, 08 - 03:11 pm Comment from: Ampar

WTFlock?

May 07, 08 - 03:18 pm Comment from: gorgalor

Flock should also come with a way to smack myspacers upside the head for poorly designed webpages. And slap facebookers upside the head for their love of dumb apps.

May 07, 08 - 03:39 pm Comment from: Ampar

"smack myspacers upside the head for poorly designed webpages"

Amen. It's too bad that there isn't an enforceable punishment for stylesheet abuse, bad color choices, font vomit and multimedia mayhem. I had hoped that being assaulted with MIDI riffs of someone's "faves" would have gone out of style by now.

May 07, 08 - 03:44 pm Comment from: appaulmac

I tried Flock way back when, but had another go when I saw this article. It's not running on the new Firefox 3 engine, but it still seems quicker than Firefox 2 is. I've been able to install my main Firefox plug-ins (web developer, etc) and they all work well.

I like the integration with Facebook (of which I'm a member) and the rss feeds is good too.

So far, it's great!

May 07, 08 - 09:20 pm Comment from: VanTurtle

I swore by Firefox, so Flock has been an EASY switch. Love it. Best part is easy media browsing, webmail checking, and blog updates. It wasn't mentioned here, but it has wordpress support. It handles my Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Feeds, Del.icio.us bookmarks next to by local ones, save sidebar notes, checks my yahoo and gmail accounts, loads media easily from iPhoto to Flickr or Facebook. It's insanely awesome. Plus all my Firefox extensions work including HTTPLiveHeaders and GoogleBrowserSync. I swear they're not paying me to say this.

May 08, 08 - 02:27 am Comment from: ibookboyuk

There is a good idea here, but sorry, I find it hard to trust programs that handle many things. Will they always keep up with the updates of every program etcetera etcetera. I like to keep things simple.
Maybe Apple will make a browser that does similar. And then maybe not lots if love

May 08, 08 - 12:05 pm Comment from: NerdimusPrime

I've been using Flock since about beta 0.8 and love it. It's got a few quirks, but nearly all my Firefox plug-ins work normally, and I never bothered with an RSS reader until I started using the built-in reader in Flock. Great stuff.

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Fri, Nov 21, 2008 - 04:41 AM EST — AAPL: 80.49 (-5.80, -6.72%) | NASDAQ: 1316.12 (-70.30, -5.07%)

Flock Web browser attempts to unify access to multiple social networks

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