My discussion with Flock CEO Shawn Hardin

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.