Spread your wings, fly the Flock

Here is a little review of a new revolutionary web browser called Flock, the social browser. For those who have been around a while and made a transition to Firefox, you'll be interested to hear that Flock is based on same Mozilla foundation like Firefox. For you who missed the Firefox revolution and still use their trustworthy Internet Explorer, never mind, you might have tuned in just in the right moment. And for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, carry on reading if you are interested in how can you improve your web viewing experience.

What I like about Flock

Flock team has tried their best to change the way how we browse the Internet forever. To do that, they have integrated most of the aspects of Internet Social Media phenomena into the very browser itself.

To users of Firefox, changing to Flock will be a breeze. Flock will automatically import all of the Firefox settings including browsing history, cache, cookies and passwords. You only need to install your favorite Firefox plugins (Flock is 99% compatible with them) and you are off. For users of other browsers Flock will be a refreshment with a modern and stylish interface and a truck-load of interesting features to play around with.

Flock integrates most of "social functionalities" directly into the browser. There is the RSS Feed reader that will allow you to collect and read feeds directly from the Flock interface. Then you have the social account manager which takes care of all your accounts on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Blogger etc. You can post to your blog (any kind of Blog is supported) directly from Flock using it's built in editor. If you come across an interesting video you can blog about it or email it by clicking on a little pop-up that appears automatically above the video. There is a built-in image uploader (to Flickr for example, but you can define your own accounts) for your images. There is the "people sidebar" that will list all your contacts from social networks like Facebook and you can share information by just drag&dropping them from a site to a contact.

I think Flock has really nailed it there, social media is certainly becoming a trend for the future and Flock is the first browser to integrate so much related features.

Since Flock shares Mozilla code-base with Firefox, all the good (and bad) things are common. Although much younger then Firefox, Flock seems to be mature enough for normal everyday use. As social media phenomena grows and expands, I am sure Flock will too.

What I don't like about Flock

When Firefox first appeared, community that hanged around it seemed to be much more enthusiastic and ambitious. One of their main goals was to dethrone the "evil" Internet Explorer as the web browser of choice. Through the course of past few years they have been mostly successful.

Flock community on the other hand seems to be much more reserved. Quieter. I see no reason for this as they have a great, free web browser made for the future. The support forums seem to be much quieter as well and you get the impression that not much is going on there as often threads are left unanswered. They really need to get their things together and start thinking seriously about this product.

To download Flock go to www.flock.com.

Suggested reading:

• Successful Facebook Integration Case Study
• Leadership blindness on social media example
• Google tech support on Analytics account removal