Flock - The social browser

Posted on September 6, 2008 at 5:24 am

Back in 2007, I first wrote about the Flock browser and how much I liked it! Indeed it is yet another browser, but it offers something more that other browsers don’t have. Flock (URL: http://flock.com/) is built from the Mozilla Firefox technology so yes it does hog a lot of RAM but its response and stability is good.

The edge of Flock over the other browsers is its capability to interface with social networking sites very easily. At the left hand part you can see its display of supported sites:

I tried it on my youtube account and I saw two of my friends (I have few friends) online at the People tab on the left hand side:

Clicking My Media displayed all of my uploaded videos on the upper part:

With Flickr the left sidebar became a list of contacts for Flickr and the upper part became a photo gallery of public photos:

If you want to change the media displayed just click on the Media Stream to choose from several options:

Changing the media stream is quick and responsive. Below is a sample Digg media stream:

Clicking the My World tab displayed activities from my friends in youtube and flickr:

I like this feature since it lets users easily see updates from their contacts without having to scour every account they got from several services. It also saves display space since every update notice is on a single page. If your friends upload photos, videos or updates their blogs you could easily see them on Flock’s interface.

Besides the mentioned features, it also lets uploading pictures to Flickr easier with its drag and drop interface. it can upload up to 1000 photos according to the How to flock tutorial:

You can see more videos on the How to Flock channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/HowToFlock

Flock is a rich browser with awesome supportability of different social services websites:

It also has excellent RSS support, see sample below for The Onion feeds:

If you are into the social websites and RSS feeds then this browser is definitely one of your best choice. Like Firefox, it could eat a lot of RAM so keep your tabs and windows to a manageable level.

Of course, Google just released their new browser also, called Google Chrome, and it has some great features, but I still enjoy the social aspects of Flock. What do you think?

Ben Carigtan writes about technology and how to get the best out of them.

Enjoyed this post? Subscribe to Online Tech Tips via RSS Feed or via Email and receive free daily productivity tips.

» Filed Under Cool Websites

Save this page	Stir it up on Mixx
Add to Reddit	Stumble this page

3 Responses to “Flock - The social browser”

axioblogger said on : September 6th, 2008 at 7:33 am

You missed facebook picture. Facebook on flock is nice. Your friends would also be at the left hand corner.

Chris Saunders said on : September 6th, 2008 at 8:15 am

I downloaded and installed Flock Beta 2.0b2 last night, so it was nice to see a post in “Flock” on the “My World” tab listed as “Flock - The social browser”… I JUST HAS TO CLICK IT!
(Just to proved it, here a screen shot of “My World” http://solutionographer.wordpr.....-world.png)
This week, it feels like I have only read about Google Chrome ( basically “the browser of the future… “). So it was a breath of fresh air to read something on a browser that is trying to be a practical solution to integrating your social networks on the web.

So… I installed it last night and since Flock Beta 2.0b2 is based on Fireworks 3 it had to work with my 12 Add-ons before I would consider it being any good. I was more than pleased when all of then worked within Flock!

Then I was up until 1:30 am. Most of the time saying “Wow!” as I kept discovering new features. One nice surprise was the “Media Stream” being set to “Facebook -> Photos from your friends”, because it highlight I had missed a number of friends photos in facebook.

Only issues I have noticed with Flock is a few inconsistencies with navigation (like “space bar” and “Alt+Left Arrow Key”) but I am using the Beta.

I think that if you like Firefox and have a lot of social or web mail accounts then give Flock a try!

liz said on : September 9th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

i’m such a big fan of Flock, back when it only supported flickr, and with all the social networking sites i am so surprised that it is not more popular. I still remember the awesomeness that was the first time i could simply drag my photo into a myspace message without having to even leave the site to get to flickr.
All your social networking, photos, videos, blogs, RSS feeds in one place. I do wish it were a little more streamlined in look and that extensions and themes were still being developed for it. the photo uploader is a dream. you can drag and drop snippets to the built in web clipboard (which is a clipmarks extension in FF3) but as of now, it’s still running quite bloated-ly as firefox2 was, and i’d like a sleeker look, and a way to refresh my sidebar peeps.
I also dig the Gloss edition of Flock, it has pre loaded RSS feeds for fashion, entertainment, shopping, etc. for the girly of us.
if you do an internet search for “flock’d” you’ll find a site that has many Firefox extensions converted to Flock.
I hope that development keeps going with Flock, and to see some theme action and some extensions.