Flock

Social browser Flock has announced the launch of a new, customized version of their browser today. The new version is named Gloss and brings together Flock's browser technology with fashion and entertainment content from over 35 sources. Glam Media, who yesterday announced the launch of their platform, is one of the launch partners. Other content providers include: Glamour, The Budget Fashionista, TMZ, Cosmo, DesignerApparel, PopSugar and others.

Within the Flock Gloss browser, there are news feeds and pre-set favorites along with a pink design (see below). My guess is that we will see a variety of these customized versions from Flock this year as they try to gain market share in the browser market.

Check out all of our Flock coverage including the launch of their Eco-Green and German versions.

By now we all know that Germany lost the EuroCup to Spain. To make up for some of the pain that Germans all over the world are feeling, Flock has launched a full German-language edition of their social browser.

It's more than just a language translation - the browser is rich with German language content. They call this conversion, "deep localized". Dan Burkhart notes, "The Flock DE edition ships with local content, media streams and service offerings from the most popular sites in Germany. (For example: sports content from sites like Sports1.de, and bundesliga.de rather than ESPN.com. News from Spiegel.de and FinancialTimes.de instead of CNN.com). Search services deliver German search results (for example, Yahoo.de, Amazon.de, eBay.de, Wikipedia.de, etc). Social sites like Facebook, Flickr and YouTube are defaulted to return the German experience."

And Flock says more localized versions will be coming soon as soon as the "dedicated volunteer localizers worldwide" offer up their free labor.

Social browser Flock certainly has had an interesting last 12 months. First a good number of executives left, then they released the .9 version of the Flock browser. They launched the full 1.0 version later in 2007 and since they have won a number of awards.

Today they are announcing the Flock 2.0 Beta which is built on top of the Firefox 3 platform. Flock is a social media browser - they have created a browser which helps social media junkies save time and effort when working with blogs, images, videos, etc. The new version offers a variety of enhancements including security updates and improved performance.

Most of the people I've spoken with over the past year have tried Flock but eventually go back to Firefox. Let's see if the 2.0 version is able to keep their core audience engaged, installed and actually using the browser on a regular basis.

You can download the beta here. Anyone else find it interesting that they made this announcement the day before Firefox Download Day?

Update from Flock: Flock reported a 400+ percent increase in revenue and a 250+ percent increase in users since January 2008.

Marketing guru and Web-celeb. Guy Kawasaki has recently added another accolade to his growing list of Alltop superlatives, browser homepage.

In honor of Earth Day, Flock recently launched a special edition of their popular browser with an unprecedented promise, to donate 10% of revenue generated from the niche browser's searches to charity; and after winning an award for community at SXSW, the charity will be selected by none other than the Flock community itself.

So what does this have to do with Alltop? Well, rather than trying to aggregate "Green" content on their own, the folks at Flock made a smart move and brokered a deal with Guy to use Green.Alltop.com as the special edition's homepage.

In the end, Flock increases distribution and continues to improve their rep., Alltop.com gets turnkey traffic, and some lucky charity will hopefully get a bunch of money. Sounds like a good Earth Day to me.

You can download the Eco-Edition of Flock here and if you feel like extending your browsing good even further, add the Effortless Good extension. In addition to your searches generating money for charity, any time you shop at Amazon, a portion of your purchase will split among 4 non-profits.

As many of you know, the Netscape browser is being retired and development will no longer continue. Netscape has posted several messages on the blog supporting Mozilla as an alternative and has provided directions on how to make the transition. Tonight they have added Flock to the recommended browser list.

From the Netscape blog:

Previously, the Netscape Team recommended that Netscape browser users adopt Firefox as their next web browser. We would also like to suggest Flock as another alternative to the Netscape web browser. Flock is a web browser that combines all of the advantages of Firefox with the addition of social integration. If you are looking for your next browser and are interested in Firefox with social integration, give Flock a try.

Flock has also announced version 1.1 of their browser this week at the MacWorldExpo. If you'd like to learn more about Flock, check out my interview with Flock CEO Shawn Hardin from late 2007.

Alright, last week we were the first to get you a review of the Flock 0.9 browser and tonight we have the first screenshot of the new Flock.com launching on Tuesday to support the new browser. Check it out below! (click for larger version)

Last night I had the chance to receive a demo of the new Flock 0.9 browser with CEO Shawn Hardin. The official launch is next week but if you want to grab the preview today, check it out on their beta page along with the welcome information. Also check out my discussion with Shawn from last week.

Overall I would say that the comparisons to Firefox are no longer warranted. This is a very powerful browser for those of you who use social networking and social media heavily. There is a pretty hefty initial setup curve to get all of your social accounts setup but you only have to do this once.

The first thing Shawn walked me through is what he calls the "differentiated value bar" - which is shown below. The options here expose the power of Flock and include a Web Clipboard which basically allows you to quickly save any bit of content by dragging it to the clipboard. Items are saved until you remove them.

Also included are a feed sidebar which is basically a slick feed manager, media bar manager and one click access to blogging and uploading.

The Media Bar is a way to see your (and your friends) media in a quick and efficient way. The "media streams" stay updated in real-time so if your friend adds a new image that falls into one of your defined areas, it will appear automatically. The Media Bar works with all of the services that are incorporated in Flock (listed below). Inside the media streams window there is a search option to search your streams and/or search your providers. A quicker way to get to the media you need than going to each individual site.

Currently Flock 0.9 has the following media services setup:

• Media Sharing: Flickr, Photobucket, YouTube
• Blogging: Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, Wordpress.com, Xanga, Self Hosted (I couldn't get it to work with Drupal)
• Online Favorites: del.icio.us, Magnolia

Flock continues to allow one click blogging and uploading. They have beefed up the upload tool which allows you to resize, rotate, etc to any photo and create tags and descriptions for each one or for a batch. Then you upload the media to any service you have setup. On the flickr upload example, it's like the standalone flickr uploader on steroids.

Other features include a bug/feedback system, one click favorites (love this); "My World" which is basically a start page that keeps track of your favorite sites, feeds and media; and the ability to save favorites locally, online or both.

Shawn closed the demo by saying he is most excited about the updates coming this summer and the 1.0 release in the early fall which will include some significant upgrades (he wouldn't tell me what they are). My suggestion is simple... if you are a heavy user of the social tools listed above, give Flock a try. If you tried it before and gave up, I would take another look. I am impressed by what I saw and while this isn't the browser for everyone, their target audience should find a great value in Flock.

Last week I had the chance to speak with Flock CEO, Shawn Hardin. We spoke for about 90 minutes and I learned a lot about Shawn's vision for the company and his commitment to the Flock users and Flockstars. We have written about Flock in the past and I have a much more positive view on the company after the discussion. Here are my notes:

• Flock has offices in Mountain View and in Canada
• 1.5 million downloads of the 0.7 Flock browser
• 450k cumulative users this year - Shawn kept thanking the users during the call
• The next version - 0.9 is in private beta currently and will deploy in 3-4 weeks
• The 1.0 version will be available in late summer

Shawn said he is most excited about the following two things:

• That Flock has a roadmap for the next 12+ months
• They have executional and operational capability throughout the year

We talked about their general strategy:

• Supporting and enhancing the social dimension
• As integrated as possible with social media
• Heavy focus on the user
• They have a usability lab which looks at usage over time

Lastly we spoke about their revenue model:

• 60-140 million folks who value social experience <-- this is their target
• Shawn noted that Firefox is currently averaging about $3 per user per year using their Google Partnership. Flock currently shares revenue with Yahoo on the same type of basis

I think Flock has to get some good publicity out there. It seems more times than not when I hear about Flock it is something either not-so-positive or negative (such as people leaving the company). I also think Flock should look at creating some videos on why Flock is better than just using Firefox plus x social tool. Does it save me time? Show me. Does it save me hardware? Show me.

I also suggested that Shawn create a "State of the Flock" video which goes over some of the parts of the roadmap. Text is fine but he is very passionate and that is just nearly impossible to have come out in text. Create a video. Show the team. Let them say why Flock is the best. Then explain that Flock has a plan for the long-term so that the users can really believe that if they switch, they won't be left for lost in a few months.

We have received a tip that it appears as though Flock's VP of Engineering and Product Development role might be opening up soon. See the image below (from the Flock about page) for the people who have left Flock over the past months.

I have been working with Flock's PR team for a couple of months now to schedule a time for me to meet with new Flock CEO, Shawn Hardin. We should be able to connect next week and I will report back after our discussion. I am very interested in learning more about what Flock is working on and their new leadership vision.

If you have any questions you would like me to ask Shawn, please leave them in the comments.