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The Web 2.0 concept of social networking has become so ubiquitous that software is now being written specifically to account for it—including web browsers specially designed to accommodate such things as social networking sites, picture and video sharing sites, and blogs.  Perhaps the giant in this space is Flock, which in May 2008 received $15 million in a fourth round of private funding—led by investors like Fidelity Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures, and Shasta Ventures.

Flock produces a web browser—also called Flock—that caters to users who keep constant tabs on social networking services like Twitter, Facebook, and Flicker, among others.  Built on top of Firefox 3.0, and available free for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Flock incorporates a sidebar, or elongated left-hand window pane, to track activity in the social networking sites to which you subscribe.  The activity in the sidebar is unrelated to the activity in the main browser window; in other words, no matter what you’re doing in the main browser window, the sidebar keeps you abreast of the comings and goings in the social networks that matter to you.  For instance, while you’re doing your online banking in the Flock main window, you’ll know the moment your aunt updates her profile picture on her Facebook page.

Flock also makes use of a media bar—a horizontal bar across the top of the browser for displaying pictures or videos from your friends on social networking sites.  Like the vertical sidebar, the action in the media bar is independent of the activity in the main browser window.  But that does not mean the bars and the main window are wholly separate from each other, however; to share content with the people in your sidebar, drag an image or block of text from the main window into the sidebar.  Or drag an image or text block to the sidebar’s web clipboard—it will stay there until you delete it.  Flock includes a native blog editor and a special page called My World, which consolidates your social networking updates, news feeds, photos, and videos.

While Flock is an interesting concept, and it does the things it advertises it does fairly well, it probably won’t become the web browser of choice for everyone, simply because many people don’t really need all the bells and whistles Flock offers.  Flock really doesn’t change the way you do things online, rather, it just puts much of the things you do online into one package.  As a result, that package is rather large, and at times can be quite cumbersome—especially all the vertical and horizontal scroll bars.  Flock’s user interface, for example, is a textbook example of clutter, with icons, tabs, browser bars, buttons, windows, search bars, and widgets everywhere.  If you’re easily distracted, or if you’re into clean design, you’re not going to find much to appreciate about Flock. But for all Flock offers, its user interface could be no other way—there’s simply no way to pack all that functionality into a simple interface.  But Flock did the best they could.

Thursday, September 4th, 2008 Both comments and pings are currently closed.

By Robert Pothier