Flock 1.0 beta has been released for public download and is available here (at the time of writing it’s not shown on the front page).
The new version of Flock, the first full release was first demonstrated at the TechCrunch 40 conference in September. The new version builds on previous Flock versions by offering a variety of social networking tie-ins.
I’ve been hard on Flock in the past, believing it to be nothing more than Firefox with a couple of fancy plugins. In some respects that was true (it’s based on Firefox code) but the new Flock offers something completely unique that for me at least makes it surprisingly very good.
Facebook Comes To The Sidebar
The big change to Flock is the introduction of sidebar social networking integration. Flock now comes standard with support for Facebook, Flickr (more so than previously), Twitter and YouTube.
Facebook addicts will love the new Flock. Sidebar Facebook access is not dissimilar to the Facebook iPhone interface, but with better options including the ability to upload photos directly to Facebook. Some options do take you directly to Facebook itself, but it’s still very handy having them at your command in an easy to use sidebar.
The Twitter app does a reasonable job and is not unlike the TwitBin Firebox plugin we have previously review, but like the Facebook app it comes with a better feature set, including action buttons allowing for direct messaging, profiles and nudging.
My only gripe with the Twitter client is that it doesn’t update as frequently as Twitterrific and there was no obvious way of changing the update frequency that I could find.
Account support is also available for Photobucket, Piczo, Del.icio.us and Magnolia.
Media Bar
The media bar is not new to Flock, but where as the service was previously focused on Flickr, Facebook support is now integrated, providing drag and drop uploads. Another feature Facebook addicts will love.
Web Clipboard
Flock now comes with what they call a “web clipboard” that allows users to drag and drop anything they see into it via the sidebar, including urls, text and images. The idea is that they can then be used when needed on other sites by drag and drop again, or via image upload as required. We’ve seen Firefox plugins before that do a similar job, but the way this is built into Flock does make it a more appealing offering. It also helps that it works well.
Blogging client
The blogging client has long been one of Flocks selling points but I’m afraid that it was really my only major disappointment with the 1.0 release. It’s a solid blog client (always has been) in doing the basics, but it fails miserably with image management. Flock doesn’t support the uploading of images to a blog and provides users with only two alternatives: upload the image to Facebook or Flickr for displaying in the post, or worst of all display the picture sourced from another web site; basically stealing someone else’s bandwidth. It really isn’t that hard to build in image uploading to WordPress or similar blog platforms, here’s hoping it’s something that Flock might address in future releases
Other features
Flock offers a browser based RSS reader which does a decent enough job for those who prefer their feeds served locally as opposed to a service like Google Reader. The media bar has expanded from simply being a photo management tool to a browsing tool that includes YouTube videos. In the case of YouTube, user accounts of videos you view are added to the YouTube sidebar. I’m not sure exactly what the appeal of this feature is, but some will like it.
Overall
Flock launched 2 years ago tomorrow so they’ve been around long enough to get their product right. It’s been a difficult two years for the startup as they’ve had to battle against a marketplace that wasn’t that receptive to new browsers. The new Flock isn’t for everyone, but it will win new fans.
just watched their demo, I must say this is really cool! and I can imagine it could be really useful too.
Been using Flock since the early alpha days and the improvements have been tremendous. It is a good looking browser, built around many of the social web apps being used. Sure, I can get all the functionality in Firefox via extensions but Flock just works out of the box.
Great browser and the community is also very cool, always willing to help out when there is an issue.
Loving it! The Facebook and Twitter integration is phenomenal!
Its really exciting to see browsers making lives of users of Facebook, YouTube etc so much easier. I suspect its still very popular with the geek (aka Tech savy ) community.
Would love to see it used by others. Features like Drag and drop will certainly help. I can see Flock really going places.
Helloooooo! People! Helloooooo **Knock **knock **
They are calling you sheep!
ttp://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
It’s still so busy of a UI. It’s like you need a PHD in Flock to really know how to use it.
If you have million doillar VC… Does your brower support basic & standard ?
Only Microsoft IE does
Does your browser support BGSOUND “”?
How long will it take to update flock to firefox 3.0 ?
I like flock a lot and was first attracted by it’s blogging tool and the user community looked good, but it’s image handling is so poor I went back to writing articles in text Edit and the using the standard wordpress interface. Which isn’t that great but works OK
I tried Flock for a few days. Features are nice, but 2 things kept me from switching. Like someone else said in the comments, there’s just too much going on in the UI, and it chews up RAM. It was claiming over 500MB after moderately heavy usage.
Flock 1.0 really is pretty impressive. The “people sidebar” works much better than I thought it would. In this day of social networking it’s very handy to have access to all of these sites out of the box without a need for all kinds of extensions. The UI is still pretty ugly though…that’s part of the reason I can’t make myself use it full time.
@Hammer
Firefox 3.0 isn’t out yet, it is still in Alpha stage. So in answer to your question, as long as it takes Mozilla to update Firefox 2 to Firefox 3.
Flock Inc are very good at updating after a mozilla patch, so when FF3 hits the shores I expect Flock will be very very close behind.
Great features but needs a lot of RAM. Too many tabs and toolbars make it look even smaller/clumsy on laptops. Sure you can trim those fancy buttons and toolbars but then Flock is meant to be like that. Another problem is, it cannot be installed by a non-administrative user on Windows XP. FF does not have this issue.
Very nice browser, but for me it is only Firefox with some good plug-ins. Thats all.
They seems have large user community I like their browser based RSS reader and blogging tools. I will look on this new version, thanks!
I have been using Flock for sometime now, about 2 months. I am not a big social networking user. I however love the integrated RSS feeder. Not to fond yet of it’s blogging tool. I think it fits my life better than other web browsers and I have made it my browser of choice.
Would love to see it used by others. Features like Drag and drop will certainly help. I can see Flock really going places.
Flock 1.0 gave a great impression. I was able to blog to my blogs straight from the browser. No plug ins so far. Browser made for the social networking community.
http://blogkatt.blogspot.com
Oh great. This is just GREAT. Now I have to test my website for Flock on Windows, Flock on Linux, Flock on Mac, this in ADDITION to testing it for Firefox on Windows, Firefox on Linux, Firefox on Mac, Opera on Windows, Opera on Linux, Opera on Mac, Safari on etc etc etc etc etc etc. Duncan, promise you’ll trash the next browser that comes along, no matter how good it is.
@sputnick
Think of it as Flock icing over a Firefox cake – you do not have to test any differently to you do now; if your webpage/site works in Firefox it will behave exactly the same in Flock.
If you visit about:config in flock, there’s a variable called flock.poller.defaultRefreshInterval. That may help to update twitter more frequently
There is no room for Flock in this market… Firefox + Plugins can do all those tricks… and more ….
There needs to be a media/Internet TV browser.
This is one I might try before add any more plug-ins to Firefox.
How ridiculous. I’m reading the beginning of the article, thinking…”what could make Duncan so excited about Flock”…and I learn about the Facebook integration and realize “DUH!” Slap Facebook on anything and you’ll get a warm response by association. This is getting rediculous.
Well, the reason you see everything revolves around facebook is because if you are associated with facebook and have money, you will make more money.
Unfortunately for them, the Romanian translation for Flock is “pubian hair”
Your posts are a must read for me since they are well thought out and meaningful. Flock seems to have struck a chord and my take on why it will become popular
, etc). So to integrate these into a common framework almost seems like something that would become an absolute necessity. Like you observed it longer seems like a glorified set of firefox plugins.
People seem to be going to the best of breed apps and these happen to come from different vendors (youtube for video, flickr for photos, twitter for well twittering, facebook for throwing pies
sputnick
I’ll happily trash to current version of Firefox, no matter what platform I use it on (Win + Mac) it freezes up and causes errors, to the point I’d switched to using Safari for everything except posting via Wordpress + WYSIWIG platforms (Safari has an issue there, and I don’t know why). So far, so good with Flock, I’ve had a ton of tabs open and it hasn’t crashed once: it might be luck or it might be that they’ve tweaked the underlying Firefox engine, not sure. If Flock starts behaving like Firefox though I’ll be back to Safari in a flash.
The big turn around was the Cormorant release. That is when Flock changed from Bart as the CEO days to a new direction and it’s been nothing but a fantastic browser with a true sense of direction since then. No offense, Bart.
@Alina – well phonetically you may be right, although I am pretty sure you were talking about “pubic hair”. The correct word in Romanian is “floc” with plural “floci”
….but I don’t think this will be a show stopper for Romanian users ….but on contrary emo-kids will find extremely cool using a browser that has such a name 
)
As a former Flocker, I’m definitely routing for them! I think Flock will make a lot of people happy! Though Firefox will for now continue to be the best browser for most people.
Duncan, it’s likely your luck. I haven’t heard of any engine “tweaks” that would account for a more stable environment.
Safari Beta on Windows? I love the font rendering, but it almost crashes as much as IE7, has problems displaying some HTML tables, and has sent a few truncated emails using gmail.
I wouldn’t want my browser to get all messed up with the social info and media. I use 8hands for my social management, and it’s much more convenient since it sits on my desktop. You can also easily update your twitter by simply changing the tag line. I highly recommend it. It’s a bit complicated to get started though, so here’s a link to their helpful video.
Tell me something, with people complain that others are stealing their images off the web, what is the deal with Flock having a built-in clipboard to do the job?
David: actually when you use the web clipboard to cite an image, Flock will add a citation with a link to the original page. So, OK, you can still remove that wrapping; but Flock isn’t helping stealing images. It’s helping polite citations
Just out of curiosity, how do they monetize a new browser? With $13M in funding, there’s obviously a compelling model, I just don’t see it.
faboulous
really faboulous