Mozilla has released details on The Coop, a new product that will incorporate social networking features directly into the Firefox browser. This is not good news for the privately-backed social browser Flock (also built on Mozilla), which is yet to release a 1.0 version of its browser. Many of the proposed features and some of the mockups created by Mike Beltzner (see above) suggest a significant overlap in the two products.
In fact, Coop even has an example screen shot of Flock on the wiki page describing the product, along with the description “The design will likely resemble [formerly of Flock] Chris Messina’s mockup for “People in the Browser”, with a horizontal bar containing avatars for a user’s friends, and icons overlaid on those avatars to indicate the presence of new content.”
The Coop product will allow Firefox users to “subscribe” to friends in the browser, bringing those friends into a sidebar. Those friends can share content and web pages with you (receive content from you, and send content to you).
Adding a friend will mean getting access to a broad array of their published web content. Content will be pulled from that person’s Flickr photo feed, del.icio.us tag feed, MySpace status , YouTube favorites, etc. When you want to share content with that user, you simply drag it into their avatar (see mockups below).
As Larry Dignan notes, The Coop could also have an impact on social networks that depend on constant user page refreshes to maintain pageview growth. Having status information on your friends directly in the browser could significantly lessen the need to visit those sites directly.
The concept sounds great, but is Mozilla looking to compete for advertising dollars, create partnered distribution with other social networking sites, or are they trying to familiarize people with a more convenient outlet in an effort to create their own social network. So in essence, will they be competing with MySpace, Facebook, or are they just another distribution channel?
This is phenominally brilliant - what a huge, great geek community it will turn out to be
It is weird to have to compete with an entity with such powerful distribution distribution channels. Granted, they aren’t the dominant one, but from the talk pages of The Coop, beltzner writes:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Talk:Labs/The_Coop
“we can’t be the first people to have thought of a service aggregator … but we have the advantage of being able to tie it in tightly with the browser itself”
Sound like MSFT? You bet.
Talk about bad news for IE6/7
I hope they offer a version without.
I want a browser, not a social network.
I don’t know about you but I don’t think I want my browser keeping a database of my personal info (profile). Period.
Agreeing with 5.
This looks enormously obnoxious. I will switch to IE if Mozilla makes this a standard part of new releases. Keep it an add-on and let the sociallly-over-networked use it and keep the rest of us happy.
Yep, I agree with 5,6, and 7. Its a neato concept, especially since there are too many social networks now (and its growing with people able to create their own within minutes)… but should “the browser” be this married to the social network craze? … and, is anyone else social-networked out?
Jason Alba
CEO - JibberJobber.com
I’d rather see them address the resource-hogging issues in Firefox. If social-networking features cause it to use any more system resources, I’ll need a freakin’ dedicated server just to browse the web.
It does sound exciting but why does Mozilla want to add further memory hogging features in firefox. A browser is supposed to help people surf the internet not manage their entire online persona. They should really offer a version without this functionality.
IMHO Flock was doomed from the start. The only way to be successful would be as an add-on and not as replacement of the whole browser. Mozilla/Firefox is a standard and you can’t easily replace or influcence that.
It’s about time someone built a social browser.
That Mike is using my design is no surprise — it’s been sitting in my Flickr acount for ages along with a bunch of other stuff that was never implemented — waiting for someone to come along and build it (that’s why it’s there — and that’ why I design for open source).
Though it might sound bad on the surface for Flock, I’m not sure it makes a difference, other than validating the original vision for Flock (which has yet to materialize) — and providing a much-needed kick in the ass to get them towards some coherent vision for what Flock should be. The Coop (creative name, there) will have the same problems that lead us down the path to creating a separate browser though — and that’s trying to graft on a fundamentally people-based experience into a primarily page-based experience.
But I welcome their efforts and do hope that it results in something good and that they’re able to learn from what progress Flock has made to date.
After all, it was long understood, at least in my mind, that Mozilla would be able to inherit from Flock’s existence; much the same as Flock did from the beginning. That’s how open source is supposed to work. And now that Mozilla Labs is thawing the pieces of the work that I put on ice when I left Flock, I think we’ll see some really good ideas come out of this.
As it is, they’ve got some of best guys at Mozilla working on this and I’ve spoken with all of them about what my vision for Flock was. At this point, I’d be thrilled if they built it.
Good on you Chris, right attitude. That said, I don’t want anything more in Firefox until they stop it consuming 98% of my CPU cycles. It’s a monster, put some effort into curing that problem so I don’t have to restart it every other day.
Have been waiting for Flock to go final and for Opera to start thinking about Social modules. The fact that Mozilla Labs implements sharing capabilities is great. If I can just drag my flickr photo album to a contact to share it, that does beat .Mac update mail.
When will any of these browsers enable people to talk? When can I click a phone number and get connected directly. I have seen some plug-ins/ad ons and they really suck. Of all social communication, I still believe the oral one to be superior.
If I could select and drag a piece of a page onto a buddy in the panel to immediately get connected voice/chat and know he sees the same as I. That would be something. Perhaps one wouldn’t have to send an image, but a CSS description and URL to highlight the selected part of a page.
FireFlocks ?
sorry
I am tired of this buddy buddy bullshit these open-source people keep tolerating. Personally i think it’s a gigantic fucking rip-off of flock’s entire existence, and if they don’t plan on buying flock or merging with flock then i don’t support this in the slightest.
I mean for the love of fucking god they called it THE COOP. I might as well just start up a new browser and call it FireFly and build it off of the mozilla platform, pretend to be a company, add two features, and then maybe i’d be an icon in the web 2.0 world.
Frankly, this idea was beyond retarded. With all due respect of course.
This is obviously good news for Firefox users.
I agree with #9. Firefox is still a resource hog. I’d rather see that fixed before it becomes a social browser.
Sick of the word ’social networking’ these days.
+1 on the performance issues. Firefox still has to get the basics down. Compared to WebKit-based browsers, it performs very poorly. I think the mozilla codebase is becoming a bit of a dog’s breakfast.
This is why I have been saying all along that building 100% off someone else is a recipe for (most likely) longterm failure.
Wow thats cool. I really love firefox.
Will the coop be Open Standards based? Will it use XFN, open Id etc. Last thing I want is another centralized social network.
I am quite curious to see if this picks up. Any one have any idea when a beta launch is predicted for (not just the sandbox)?
What’s the value add to me as the user to recreate my social network within my browser? I don’t get what this gives me that I don’t already have with something like Facebook. Could this play with the Facebook API so we’re not completely recreating the wheel?
It is a dumbass idea..I don’t know why #1 and #2 thinks it is a gr8 idea..
I use Flock, because Firefox is now too big and slow. If they add social networking (which in Flock amounts to posting your blog and your photos to Flickr and some other blogging software), won’t it make Firefox bigger and slower?
Interesting… However, with everything available on the web, why do people need to manually rebuild their social network? Just by looking at someones blog, I can see who their friends are, what their interests are, etc..
Just aggregate that content and throw it into a database and voila - instant social network, instant social search; if I need a recommendation for music - search my network… If I want to buy something from eBay - search my network.
It only makes sense that we should be moving towards more algorithmic means for identifying relationships.
What’s wrong with StumbleUpon? Why would I want my already resource hogging browser to also keep tabs on me remotely?
Yeah adding anything (that is not optional) could kill Firefox ..
- If I dont have the option to leave this thing out .. (for the sake of ram)
- I would defintly probably go to Opera
Thank you very much, TC moderators, for deleting the comment I posted last night.
I really agree with you francine. the first argument to firefox is his performace over IE. I don’t think i will use this feature
Mike you might want to add an additional para on startup advice
“Not to build solely on others technology”.
Now we have seen 2 examples of this in a short time span. First Alexa shutting the doors on Statsaholic and now Mozilla decided to have an in house version of Flock.
Link to statsaholic coverage on techcrunch is here
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....trackback/
Nice match for Mugshot, a complimentary open source community effort… 1 + 1 = 3?
I like the idea. It would be nice if it was another browser kind of like flock, but with an On Off option. I wouldn’t care to use The Coop, as long as I was able to turn it off, when i didn’t want it on. Also I would want to option to not have it at all. Firefox != The Coop but The Coop == Firefox
Minggl does all of this today IE & FF (PC & Mac) and much more
http://www.minggl.com
Josh (#16):
Have you even *used* Flock? It’s Firefox with extensions and a skin, except it’s just already built in. I don’t see Mozilla as ripping Flock’s existence, but adding a feature that they see is needed. This isn’t Highlander, it’s business and “There can be only one” just doesn’t apply.
Firefox still has a lot of market share to gain, if this helps it, then that’s great.
Besides, Flock was bad news for Flock. It’s self-expected genius hampered by mediocrity.
“Besides, Flock was bad news for Flock. It’s self-expected genius hampered by mediocrity.”
the reason this pisses me off is that the guy that came up with the “idea” for Mozilla is actually a former Flock employee… that’s why the screenshots even show Flock being used and not Firefox… This isn’t a competing idea, this is a stolen idea. Let’s also clear this up: Mozilla is a corporation and Flock is a corporation. They’re both for-profit entities.
IMO, that’s pathetic. Mozilla should be concentrating on making a better rendering engine, not feature enhancements like this, or a competitor for Apollo… get your fucking act together, Mozilla. Firefox is turning to shit with these memory leaks and all they can do is steal ideas from other companies!
My only question is, is it pronounced “co - op” or “koop” ?
this is what extensions are for. i want my browser to be a browser, and any other functionality should be added on as i need it.
if i wanted a browser that was full of other crap, i would be using opera or flock
@ #40
That’s exactly what I said… they’re losing focus…
I think this is a great idea, and I hope they make it non-optional. People that really hate it can use another browser, but forcing people who use the latest version of Firefox to have social networking built in will maximize the size of the network.
BTW, I have 14 Firefox windows open, some with multiple tabs. I don’t notice any performance impact on my XP box. What kind of boxes are getting bogged down by Firefox?
Firefox started as an alternative to the slow, bloated, feature-crazy Mozilla. Now we need an alternative to the slow, bloated, feature-crazy Firefox.
They’re after Myspace users for this not geeks.
My first reaction upon reading the post was that this is a great idea. But after reading other’s comments, I agree that The Coop should be optional if offered in the next Firefox release.
I would use it, but I want it to be separate from my browser, maybe as part of a suite of software. i.e. you could download the Firefox suite consisting of Firefox, Thunderbird, and The Coop. All-in-one software (or even hardware) never seems to cut it. As #40 said, a browser should be a browser.
But it’s okay, Flock. Sometimes seemingly great ideas just don’t turn out as intended or aren’t highly embraced as expected. I liked the idea of Flock so I downloaded it. But I never use it. I use plain old Firefox instead. I don’t know why. I just do.
Good for Firefox! Flock is taken too damn long to be release they been talking smack for two years.
So if they are mad cause Firefox is going one up them then screw it. You could give Flock a $1 billion and they still will not release a browser!
Flock is dead!
this is ridiculous, this will signal the end of firefox, what a waste of resources. This is a plugin at best…and should be kept out of the core browser. this is the end of a focused browser…
agreed:
@ #40
That’s exactly what I said… they’re losing focus…
What’s a ’social’ and why would I want to network with it?
@Jimmy: do you understand “low barriers to entry” now? how about now?
24 yo CEOs…yep, bubble 2.0 exploding…now.
Well,
I haven’t completely made up my mind on this issue. I believe it will definitely be an enhancement to the social networking world. Sometimes I fill as if I am just plum sick of all this social network crap though. On the other hand I love some social networks. I don’t believe I could live without MySpace because it has helped me find a lot of childhood friends and missing family. What I try to do is be centralized. Just join up with two or three networks and if my friends really want to be ’social’ with me, then they will join the network I am on. If they don’t like it they just have to hack it. After all, this is ‘MYspace’ not ‘myFRIENDSspace.’ Take it from the name…stay in your own little ’space.’ IMHO…if friends are really true friends, then they will want to come where you are. What I am basically saying is….be the leader of your own life. Don’t let others lead you around by the nose. Now that’s hard for some people but ‘leadership’ is my type of personality.
I seem to lean toward the opinion that FireFox needs to fix the memory issues before they go to adding a lot of stuff to it. Like some said, I don’t want this ‘Coop’ thing to be mandantory. Now I don’t mind if they have all the little options installed on the options box and maybe a checkbox that says ‘Enable The Coop.’ Notice that I said ‘LITTLE,’ that means….everywhere that you turn and look it doesn’t need to say ‘enter your MySpace ID,’ or ‘Sign up for The Coop.’
I say keep it in a nice centralized place and add the ability for users to turn in on and off. Most of all, DO NOT ‘COOP’ us up with monetizing ads!!!! We do not want to be little clickin’ chickens….so stay away from the idea of heavy monetizing!!!!!!
Jason
There is already a social browser already out based on Firefox, and NO its not Flock its the Social Browsr.
http://www.socialbrowsr.com
How long will it take Microsoft to follow suit with an add-on for Internet Explorer?
Anybody else get the feeling this is being done with a little shovin and pushin by google?
I mean think about it. They already fund 90% of firefox. The next version will enable google apps to go offline.
With this, google can keep even better tabs on the users!! Apparently, it isn’t enough to drop cookies that last 38 years, or track IPs through adsense and link them to user names….
Hot babe installs geeky Firefox extension! News at 11.
What a stupid plan. I won’t be using it.
“Apparently, it isn’t enough to drop cookies that last 38 years, or track IPs through adsense and link them to user names….”
Umm… cookies have to have an end date… If you’re set to log in indefinitely, how else do you think they do it?
Obviously Mozilla has more money than they know what to do with. This is a recipe for disaster.
I’m in favor of small pieces, loosely joined — not monoliths. Give me lightweight apps and give me choice.
I am sick of “social networks”
@ 37 “Rick”
Yes i’ve used flock, to say the least i used the hell out of flock for quite a long time. I was a part of their mailing list and i’ve been paying close attention to them since their conception. Flock is a different take on firefox and there needs to be differentiation between the two.
Flock is social and flock is blogging. It is firefox + features (whether or not you want to call it an extension or not).
Firefox is bare-bones and customizable. Firefox can fulfill whatever needs you need it to fulfill, and that’s the way it should stay.
If firefox wants to completely rip-off flock then so be it, but i’ll be on my way to opera if that happens. In all honesty, it’s not just blatantly apparent it’s also ridiculously ignorant. Stealing someone else’s programming to use it in a unique way, that’s open source, stealing someone’s ideas and entire company for your own gain, that’s greedy.
if i had a nickel for every bad idea the Firefox/Mozilla folks came up with.
seriously - where do they get their MBAs, anyway?
yes - let’s get all those teens to commit to gathering all their fellow cantankerous chickens and rabid roosters and and haughty hens into the chicken-wire Coop.
seriously - there is _not_ a brand problem with that. I promise.
you know - i’m feeling like some KFC right now. but first i’m gonna head over to PeTA and watch some chickens getting bashed against the wall, screaching in terror, and finally getting their gullets ripped out. and _then_ i’m gonna go have my KFC chicken sandwich. and after i’m nice and full, _then_ i’m gonna head over to the Coop, dude! because the Coop is cool!
losers.
One thing for sure..anything that is built into firefox is very user friendly and highly intuitive..i look forward to using this..
Love it. Another reason why Firefox is number one in my opinion.
Glad to hear that Firefox finally made this crucial step in opening op.
Does this work with http://www.cavengernews.com?
I’ve never had a profile on any social network, and I never plan to either.
However, this is a compelling idea considering the number of networks out there; there are a number of solutions that aggregate ones various network profiles. Some are web-apps, some are browser add-ons, extenstions, plug-ins, etc, and some are stand alone (most of them are mentioned in the comments above. There is definitely a use-case here.
I am a long-time firefox user, but I obviously have no use for this at all. Please tell me where it was stated that this would become part of the firefox core. I just haven’t seen that stated anywhere. Proof?
It will be an add-on, guaranteed!
Jumping to conclusions about how this will be implemented can only be valuable to those who have something to lose from this new component for the firefox browser.
I’ve been using Flock for over a year now. While the current release is still in beta, it is still a full-fledged browser because of its use of the open-source Firefox/Mozilla rendering engine. It has been my primary browser at work and home since 0.7.0 and I’ve encountered few issues. The issues that I have discovered have been responded to by a member of Flock very expediently and corrected in the next release.
In reviewing The Coop, it does appear there is some overlap to functionality in the Flock browser. But there is still significantly more to Flock outside of sharing content. There is the whole interactive application for posting and consuming social content (i.e. blogging, picture uploads, searching via favorites service, etc.).
Also, Flock has been working on this concept for two years. So they have acquired some valuable information in that time about what works and what doesn’t in a social browser.
The use of Chris Messina’s concepts that he developed while at Flock is disturbing. I’m surprised that Flock does not have a non-disclosure/non-compete for this type of work. Its one thing if Flock gives it a green light for use in open source, it is entirely another if it is being ripped off. It also sounds like from Chris’ comment on this post that he has some disgruntlement with Flock and this is a venue for being vindictive to his previous employer. I’d like to hope this is not the case at all.
Finally, Flock has done something more than develop a social browser. It has developed a community which is the foundation and basis of any social network. Their team and evangelists are very involved, receptive and responsive to the collaboration from the user community. While there are millions of Firefox users, the community is still disparate.
From what I have seen so far, there is nothing very compelling about The Coop over the capabilities already established in Flock. Flock 1.0 will be released this year…CEO Shawn Hardin is going to make that happen.
I love reading TechCrunch, but it certainly would be nice if TC would have contacted Flock for comment on this post seeing as it has some tremendous implications to their operation. And if TC did seek comment with no success, that should have been stated in the post as well.
I’m proud to be a Flockstar and having had the opportunity to collaborate with such talented people on developing a best-in-class social browser.
Flock’s CEO Shawn Hardin responds to this post:
http://www.flock.com/node/9353
like others have said, I hope that this is optional.
Why do companies always ruin great products with feature bloat? I want my browser to be really good at browsing the internet. I don’t want to have a friend’s list built into firefox. It would be fine if it was a plugin/extension. Don’t add it to the browser though! The firefox team should be working on making their browser more stable, faster, and reducing the memory foot print… not adding social network features. :[
So many products have followed this same path. Winamp playing movies, NERO trying to do do everything under the sun, including associating one of it’s apps with every single image and movie file format on my computer… Homesite 2.5 was the perfect web development tool before they fucked it up and killed it… the list goes on and on.
No way can “The Coop” be as innovative as flock. And even if it could be, they would be way behind on developing it.
Ref: a Flock opinion of “The Coop” http://www.flock.com/node/9353
My Browsers: http://docs.google.com/View?do.....on=_latest
I didnt like flock in the first place since it splits Firefox fans into two. Now, it’s clear Firefox are fighting back. I don’t like the sound of this. What interest me is, can I still use normal Firefox since I’m not interested in the community thing at all. I just want best performance.
@67 webonics:
Just to dispel any uncertainties, the mockup was in my Flickrstream for well over a year; I had no idea that the Mozilla guys were interested in it or were going to use it, nor did they ask for my permission in using it; it’s licensed under Creative Commons; their use is questionable, given the commercial nature of Mozilla, but it doesn’t offend me.
In terms of my “disgruntlement”, I’m simply impatient that much of what I was a part of at Flock has yet to see the light of day and that the Mozilla folks put something out first that was labeled “People the Browser” when clearly these ideas came from someplace else.
I don’t think it’s a matter of ripping anyone off; that’s not how software works, especially in the open source community. The designs I made are next-to-worthless if they don’t get built, and I was at Flock to help build a browser that understood that the web is a social place and not just a place for academic HTML papers.
I tried The Coop add-on and it has a long way to go; as such I’m not worried for Flock’s sake, but I do hope that it gets the conversation restarted about what a social browser might be like — and clearly there’s a lot of folks in the TechCrunch peanut gallery who fear change and resist the notion that browsers should finally reflect the way the web is actually being used today.
@Chris Messina
Thanks, Chris, for your clarification and insider perspective. I’m glad to hear it wasn’t so much disgruntlement as it is frustration. I know the Flock user community is just as anxious for the 1.0 release. CEO Shawn Hardin has communicated to us to several times in the last few months that getting 1.0 out this year is the number one priority. Flock has been great at conceptualizing the possibilities of the product but needs to change gears and execute now. I’m putting my faith in that for now. I’d rather Flock do it right with the 1.0 release than to release early and find major issues which may end its viability all together.
And thanks for explaining your work is available under CC. I was just somewhat confused by its use. As I work in multimedia development, anything that I develop or concept at my employer is legally owned by the company or the client regardless of whether the concept or application ever comes into fruition. These digital rights can be tricky. But if your work is not owned by Flock, then you should be able to distribute it as you choose.
I hope Flock will re-examine your concepts and work towards integrating them into the future releases.
Cheers!
Nobody cares about social networking or Flock = all press no usage. If you guys want optimal performance you should be using Opera: http://www.FirefoxMyths.com
Anyone heard of otherEgo.com? It kind of does something similar, but loads all your profiles and websites into your otherEgo profile: http://www.otherego.com
I hope they make it an downloable extension, not a permanent component of the browser… why the hell I want a social network for my porn?
Waiting to see how this will turn out.
The idea that anyone concerned about the resource impact must “fear change” is startlingly ignorant. If resource hogging is turning Firefox into an irritant rather than a pleasure, usually the first thing to do is start removing extensions to lighten the load — but you can’t do that if the add-on is no longer removable. I’m not talking “ancient” computers, either; mine is 1.6GHz laptop, and I did have to eliminate many extensions to *keep* using even basic sites like Blogger enjoyable.
Second, there’s the big issue of user control. The reason there’s more than one extension for many tasks is because we don’t all like the same presentation or features. This is a bit of a problem, I think, when Firefox integrated session saving (much as I like it). Theirs has strengths/weaknesses different from savers in Tab Mix Plus or Session Saver; if somebody prefers TMP or SS, sure, we can tell Firefox to use them instead, but that doesn’t get rid of the FF code taking up space.
As far as the guy freaking over “ripping off” Flock: go do some reading about what Open Source, Creative Commons, and Proprietary models are. Your preference is “proprietary” for both designs and code, it sounds like; you’re entitled to have it, but then you should focus on using software from that model, not be enraged that there’s a community that doesn’t share your view. (I know OSS and CC aren’t the same: the issue he’s angry about appears to be that sharing takes place at all, with or without permission, regardless of medium.)
I agree with the others that add-on or not, the big focus really *should* be with fixing Firefox’s major resource problems right now. Even if the problem is particular extensions, as I’ve often heard; in that case, it’s about time to start locking things so they *can’t* trash finished/full releases.
I am not sure I want all of this in my browser everytime I try to use it. I spend most of my time in the browser trying to find information to get my job done and not to interact with other people. However, I will wait to see how this takes off.
I bet this will end up as a half attempted idea. Firefox has so much that needs work. Its kind of disappointing to see the main dev team working on this.