76 people says things!

1. “If they blog I am assuming the majority of them are comfortable with using the web-based interface that comes with their blogging package”

   … thats pretty much the impression I got when I tried it ( http://richardathome.wordpress.com/2005/10/21/why-flock/ ).

   Perhaps they should have concentrated on producing a bunch of add-ons/sidebars/bookmarklets for Firefox instead.

   By Richard@Home on November 1, 2005 12:33 pm

2. It’s been said that was their original gameplan, but for one reason or another they wanted to create their own experience and therefore modified the actual Mozilla code.

   I think the sidebar approach would require much less in resources: time, money and people. If I recall they have over 13 people on staff. That still blows my mind.

   By Scrivs on November 1, 2005 12:38 pm

3. I’ve tried Flock and was fairly impressed with the product itself, especially for the early stage of development it’s in. But, I do agree with you completely: it seems like a nice product that’s missing a target audience. A solution with no problem. That kind of thing. Good product or not, they’ve got a major uphill battle to fight if they want to make money. I certainly wouldn’t bet much on it. But, I do admire the job they’ve done with the product itself.

   By Jeff Croft on November 1, 2005 12:38 pm

4. Yeah that seems to be the general perception that I am reading and kind of a reflection of the overall trend that we are seeing during this business cycle.

   By Scrivs on November 1, 2005 12:49 pm

5. It didn’t make blogging any easier for me, and the whole del.icio.us integration thing seemed to be more complicated than the already very useful web-based interface.

   But at least they had a clever, shiny, Apple-like logo.

   By Beau on November 1, 2005 12:51 pm

6. A solution with no problem is precisely what it is, and that’s the crux of the issue behind the browser and the company. It may be a fantastic solution, a fantastic piece of software — but if it doesn’t solve a real-world need then it doesn’t matter.

   Maybe Flockers will fly in and tell me that it solves a real need, the need of bloggers to constantly be connected to the technology they have grown accustomed to. Okay, that’s 1% of the US population, so where’s the real need here?

   There is no way that Flock will ever take any % away from the installed IE base, because if they haven’t switched by now, there’s no way any IT departments will choose Flock over Firefox. And if they manage to grab 5% of the installed base of Firefox, that’s not a whole lot of people. Solution without a problem. Overhyped but underdelivered.

   By Mike Rundle on November 1, 2005 1:05 pm

7. “They got overexposed before the product hit the shelves and you could just sense the blogosphere (yeah I used the word) waiting in anticipation for some great failure.”

   Actually, the hype got me so fired up (i know, i know. i have a problem) for the product that I was painfully underwhelmed when it finally “landed.”

   By Josh on November 1, 2005 1:14 pm

8. Heh, that’s even worse in my opinion.

   By Scrivs on November 1, 2005 1:18 pm

9. I guess I missed the early buzz about Flock, but the first time I wandered over to their site, I was completely unable to figure out what their product actually was. I’m sure I could have dug around deeper, but instead, I just left the site.

   The home page announced that “the preview was available for download” and the “about” page just listed info about the staff. In vain, I searched for a simple explanation of what their product was. Was it some kind of FF extension, or maybe a new email client? What the heck was it?

   How about a one-sentence explanation on the home page of what the hell your product is guys….is that so hard? Hell, if I had just seen the word “browser” anywhere on the page, I might have figured it out!

   Now sure, 99.9% of the people who hot that site already knew what Flock was, but a group who is so bad at explaining the basics of their product is probably not going to be successful at much of anything.

   By Graham on November 1, 2005 1:27 pm

10. I have a small system of steps when trying out a new app.

    I first run it directly off of the disk image (OS X) and only if I don’t immediately dislike it do I move it over to my Applications folder. But even then, it’s still on probation. I frequently comb through my Applications folder and delete any apps that failed the probation period (meaning they’re rarely or never used).

    Flock never made it off of the disk image.

    By Ryan on November 1, 2005 1:36 pm

11. When I first heard about this flock thing, it sounded really cool, but as more details have transpired about what it actually does I’ve not actually been bothered to install it.

    I think Flock is aimed at “power bloggers”, those that maintain a blog, post to delicious and use Flickr. Thing is, most power bloggers already have the skills (and extensions, bookmarklets et al) to connect these services together.

    I have a bookmarklets for delicious/wordpress and a search plugin for flickr, why do I need to install and setup a another beta application to do all that for me?

    By Tom on November 1, 2005 1:52 pm

12. I read all the hype of this cool new software, went to the website to try and figure out what sort of software was cool, couldn’t find anything. downloaded it, used it, was mildly amused, but honestly dissapointed.

    Kudos for their hard work, because there is nothing bad about the software. It’s just that there is no real use for most people.

    Next week: How flock changed my life.

    By Kyle Posey on November 1, 2005 1:54 pm

13. Same here, Ryan.

    I actually quite fancied the concept of a browser with the features Flock purports to offer, but once I found out that a del.icio.us account with ~2000 bookmarks (which probably isn’t a lot compared to some folk) killed Flock stone dead, and that the weblogging features, well, don’t really work at all, I pretty much decided that I won’t be using it even if a future non-beta version works well. With less hype, I probably would’ve made a note to check it out again when it hit 1.0, but raising expectations to fever pitch only to deliver a shoddy, half-baked app is about the most off-putting thing developers can do.

    By Jack Mottram on November 1, 2005 1:55 pm

14. Most of the features of flock are already available using bookmarklets which are mainly browser independent.

    I have recently created a quite neat bookmarklet, called blummy ( http://blummy.com/ ), that itself contains more bookmarklets and provides them as a dropdown. So you could post to del.icio.us from within the current page or now (brand new ;) ) access your latest bookmarklets from del.icio.us without having to leave the page.

    If you want to equip your browser with Flock’s features you might want to have a look at it.

    By Alexander Kirk on November 1, 2005 2:24 pm

15. I felt the exact same way. I heard about “Flock” and thought wow I wonder what this is. I went to their website and still couldn’t figure it out, so I download it. Then I went, who cares… it’s Firefox without the plugins I use everyday.

    Maybe if I was a big blogger then it would make a difference to me.

    My main question is with Firefox being so open to development via extentions/plugins — wouldn’t the “Flock” concept just be easy to work with as an extension?

    The way I see Flock is a custom browser along the lines of Browser Bob was/is for IE.

    By Shaun Guidolin on November 1, 2005 3:15 pm

16. Hi folks,

    Flock here. Here’s the basic premise behind the company: the web has evolved tremendously over the past ten years, but the web browser experience has basically remained the same. Yes, Firefox supports modern web standards and gets rid of web nuisances. Yes, it adds tabbed browsing. Put Firefox 1.0 next to Netscape 1.0 and you’ll notice the browsing experience has remained essentially unchanged. There’s even button-for-button parity. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: users feel right at home, and many folks (in fact, most people in this discussion) may think that “it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Here’s what I like best about Firefox: they had a very clear vision (streamline the browser experience), have executed well against that, and the product reached maturity just when there emerged a real need for that experience.

    Flock’s vision is different. We believe that the web has evolved, the browser experience hasn’t, and there’s therefore a ton of room for innovation. In particular, we believe that there’s a ton of work to do in building a web browser that integrates the social and two-way aspects of the web. We believe that there *is* a big problem to be solved: talking back to the web (blogging, even sharing pictures) is a royal pain, and the browser has not lived up to the original vision of Tim Berners Lee in this regards. So we’re working on that. We’re experimenting. To be clear: we don’t think that our vision is right and the Firefox vision is wrong - they’re just different visions. Sure, our code is still very immature and has a lot of bugs. Sure, parts of the user experience are still broken. Sure, the delta between Flock and Firefox is still too small for many people and you can do many of things we do with a patchwork of extensions to Firefox. But we believe that there’s work to be done, and we’ve embarked on a journey to tackle this challenge. And we’ve chosen to jump into the fray and put our code out there even at this early stage, so that we can get feedback and, even better, patches.

    And, man [to the author of this blog] are you eager to call this one early on. We’re 3.5 months into this. It took Mozilla FIVE YEARS to get to Firefox 1.0. We have a vision and we’re going to work our butts off to deliver an exciting product that will improve the web browser experience for millions of users. And it will take time. The Mozilla folks set out on a bold journey, made mistakes, took the heat, kept at it, and eventually built a killer product. We hope to do the same.

    By bart on November 1, 2005 3:35 pm

17. Bart,

    Thanks for stepping in and offering your opinion, however I have to disagree with pretty much everything you are saying. The problem isn’t the browser experience, since browsers should be left to being just browsers and nothing more. If there is a problem with communicating to the social and two-way aspects of the web it has to with the websites themselves.

    In the end you aren’t fixing anything. You are providing just another way to blog and just another way to share pictures via Flickr. How are you solving a problem there when many people don’t see a problem? Over 20M blogs exist so I can assume those people don’t see a major problem with how they blog. Who knows how many people use Flickr so what is the problem with sharing photos?

    Sure maybe you consider these to be major problems that you are having, but is it fair to assume that because they are your problems they are everyone else’s problems as well? Stating that one of the major problems is that the browser hasn’t lived up to Berners Lee’s vision of the web doesn’t do it for me. Saying that talking back to the web is a pain still doesn’t tell me the problem.

    What is the problem you are solving specifically?

    By Scrivs on November 1, 2005 4:33 pm

18. Oh and the reason I am calling it early is because a year from now I don’t see you changing your statements. You are probably still going to tell me that you are solving the problem of communicating to the two-way web. I didn’t know that was a problem.

    By Scrivs on November 1, 2005 4:35 pm

19. Here’s what I thought when I learned about Flock and checked out their site: “Yet another web 2.0 product that nobody needs.”

    Bart, I wish you the best of luck, but I hope you’re not expecting to make a living off Flock in any meaningful way.

    If you’ve created this product in order to see if you can do it (i.e. as some kind of technological challenge), then more power to you.

    Just don’t expect to get anything more than a teeny, tiny, miniscule amount of maket share - just look at Opera, for instance.

    There’s only so much room in the market for different browsers, and now that IE is being upgraded, the “new kids” don’t stand a chance.

    Sorry for being so harsh - just giving you my thoughts as someone who might be a potential user (I use all the services Flock integrates).

    By Christian Watson on November 1, 2005 8:06 pm

20. Now here’s some misleading bull: “And, man [to the author of this blog] are you eager to call this one early on. We’re 3.5 months into this. It took Mozilla FIVE YEARS to get to Firefox 1.0.”

    Mozilla took about 5 years to mature their technology platform. Firefox took about a year to achieve widespread use. Flock’s been around since early in 2005 when they were working on Firefox extensions. If in six more months, they’re as popular as Firefox was in its first year, I’ll eat my hat.

    \D.

    By dave on November 1, 2005 9:14 pm

21. Scrivs - “there’s no problem” because people are using what they’ve been accustomed to using for the last 10 or 15 years. It’s a risky position from a business standpoint - but if they can make things sig

    The opinion that “the browser should be left alone” is a value judgement rather than a rule. Ultimately, you’ve both got differing but reasonable points of view.

    Another potential way forward is to keep web-application development based around XHTML/JS/CSS/etc, but provide an interface where people can choose how deep they let certain applications into their computer. That way you could get the seamless interfaces of a client app, without relying on Flock to build all the interfaces for you.

    By Sam on November 1, 2005 9:34 pm

22. …I trailed off half way though a sentence in the 1st paragraph.

    Scrivs - “there’s no problem” because people are using what they’ve been accustomed to using for the last 10 or 15 years. It’s a risky position from a business standpoint - but if they can make things significantly better (they don’t seem to have got there yet) then the benefits in moving might be more apparent.

    The are two points that are being a mid muddled:
    1. What Flock has right now doesn’t cut it
    2. Flock’s strategy is fundamentally flawed.

    While there are good arguments to support (1), it seems that (2) is a matter of opinion at this stage.

    By Sam on November 1, 2005 9:41 pm

23. “…browsers should be left to being just browsers and nothing more…”

    This strikes me as more than a little narrow-minded. Don’t get me wrong, for many people that is all they need or want. Fine, no problem. But for someone of that viewpoint to assert it for all is frankly ridiculous.

    I unfortunately know people that think that IE is all they need and there is no need for products like Firefox. Isn’t your statement uncomfortably like theirs?

    It is great what Mozilla has done and while Flock is in its infant stages I think that what they are trying to bring to the table is worthwhile. There is a dynamism in the Web experience and to try to keep products in the “tried and true” ways of the past is well and good in a way but leaves a gap that can be filled by people with enough prescience and ability to carry it off.

    Will Flock be able to carry it off? Clearly many of you don’t think so but many others see it as a viable first step towards developing the “browser” more closely along the lines of how the Web itself is developing.

    By Inkblot on November 1, 2005 10:55 pm

24. I tried it, I liked it, but, as I am a OSX user, it suffered from the same problems that FF does under OSX - too slow and looks like crap.
    A shame!
    Hopefully the Moz team will catch up on OSX and then I will use Flock again.

    In the meantime - apparently the new OSX Safari release has fixed the Safari FOUC! Yay! :)

    By Lea de Groot on November 1, 2005 11:03 pm

25. I don’t get what you have against Flock; Some people may like what they’re doing and use it, but if you don’t think there’s a need for it then just leave it alone.

    By Foshizzle on November 1, 2005 11:06 pm

26. After reading bart’s comments, I think the problem here is that the Flock folks think they have a vision for the way a new kind of web browser can work, but most of the rest of us aren’t really “getting it.” I don’t know if they’re not properly communicating the vision or we’re just too slow to pick up on it.

    Since I can’t see to pick up on the abstracted “we have a vision” sort of comments and figure out exactly what that vision is, I’m left to look at the product. Right now, the product seems like a pretty good web browser (thanks to Gecko under the hood) with a few bits of clever integration with a few choice websites (Flickr, delicious, my blog). I use Flickr and blogging, and I was definitely open to the idea of these interfaces being built into my browser, but I also wouldn’t say I ever felt there was a “problem” with the “old” way of managing them. But, I am always looking for new and better ways, so I gave Flock a try and ultimately felt like the “old” way was better for me — at this point. I’ll certainly keep an eye on Flock to see if it improves, though.

    The bottom line is this: I didn’t feel like, when I was using Flock, that I was participating in a “whole new way of using the web,” which is sort of the promise that was delivered. I felt like I was using the same old browser with a few clever extensions. If that’s just because Flock is still new, fine. But I think people are comparing the grand vision Flock seems to have and the promise of “a whole new web” with the product that has been released — which just doesn’t seem all that revolutionary. Ultimately, there’s a disconnect. I’m left to this it’s one or more of the following:

    1. The vision isn’t being communicated amongst all the hype.
    2. The current version of the product doesn’t play out the vision, but users expected it to.
    3. The Flock team’s vision just isn’t as “revolutionary” to me as it is to them.

    As I said in my previous post, I was impressed with Flock. It’s a good browser and the add-ons for Flickr and blogging were nice (if serving a very niche market). But the hype of an “entirely different” browser led me to have expectations the product just couldn’t live up to, I guess.

    By Jeff Croft on November 1, 2005 11:35 pm

27. Hoooly crap.
    You guys scrap this one out, we’ll all be working over here until we see the dust settle…

    By luxuryluke on November 2, 2005 12:35 am

28. Interesting comments since I left. I still really want to like Flock, I want it to be the tool I use for the read/write web but I jut don’t see any advantages of using Flock rarther than Fox + bookmarlets/plugins. Perhaps I’m not getting it?

    When it reaches 1.0 or whatever I’ll give it a proper try and see how it works out. Until then I’ll stick with what I’ve got.

    By Tom on November 2, 2005 7:53 am

29. The reason I switched to Firefox was because it radically changed the way I browsed the web. It made my browsing more efficient, and sped up my work flow. If I wanted to add extras I could, but it didn’t come with a lot of clutter and I liked that.

    Flock doesn’t give me any motivation to switch, because other than looking pretty, it doesn’t do anything I can’t already do. It won’t speed up my blogging, sharing photos, or social bookmarking, because I already have Firefox extensions for all that. Heck a Myspace browser would’ve been more interesting.

    By Beth on November 2, 2005 2:52 pm

30. Here’s what I don’t get:
    You haven’t TRIED the product, but you’re going to declare it DOA and deride it because you don’t understand the value of it?

    Forgive me for saying so, but I find that position astoundingly arrogant. It’s fine and healthy to be skeptical. But saying “I never tried it because I didn’t see a need for it.” and then trashing it for several paragraphs is reminiscent of:
    “Who would need a computer in their HOUSE?”
    “But my horse is plenty fast enough.”
    “Why do I need a vacuum when I have a broom?”
    “I do not like them, Sam-I-Am, I do not like green eggs and ham!”

    Some things are hard to know the value of until you’ve *actually used* it.

    By Gabriel on November 2, 2005 2:58 pm

31. “Heck a Myspace browser would’ve been more interesting.”

    Sssssh! Don’t give them any ideas!

    By Sam on November 2, 2005 3:02 pm

32. Who would need a computer in their HOUSE?
    -Anyone who wishes to complete mundane computational tasks much faster than before.

    But my horse is plenty fast enough.
    - But will it move when you want it to and will it get there faster than my car?

    Why do I need a vacuum when I have a broom?
    - Because brooms suck on some carpets and hard to reach places.

    See the difference? Your questions were easy to answer and showed there was a problem. I can “derail” Flock because it doesn’t answer a question easily and doesn’t tell me what the problem is besides making reference to the social web. You say I should try it, but if you can’t get people past the reasons for why they should try it how can you be successful?

    By Scrivs on November 2, 2005 3:04 pm

33. Scrivs said: “Over 20M blogs exist so I can assume those people don’t see a major problem with how they blog.”

    If everybody adopted that sort of attitude, we’d still be riding horse-drawn buggies (which did get people from place to place, after all) or manually drawing our water up from wells or using punch-cards to write computer programs rather than having nifty IDEs and toolkits.

    Sure, the existing tools get things done, but things don’t improve until somebody comes along and tries to innovate in ways that make things better. Flock may not be there yet, but that’s the vision I think Bart’s describing.

    By Daryl on November 2, 2005 3:49 pm

34. *sigh* Same responses over and over again, what is Bart’s vision though? Nobody seems to be able to tell me what this magical vision is in a language that makes sense.

    By Scrivs on November 2, 2005 3:56 pm

35. His vision is of money.

    Its jump on a band wagon time. On and on about “writing to the web” well, blow me, I think there is more to the web then blogs, and all Flock does it make use of the API provided by some other sites…. wow. Ammmmmaaaazing.

    Other then that, nice browser, works ok. But no better then Mozilla, so why do they think they will “kill IE”? I think not.

    By haydies on November 2, 2005 4:25 pm

36. At this point Flock reminds me of those keyboards that have extra buttons for things like “Internet” and “Email”.

    By R. Marie Cox on November 2, 2005 4:53 pm

37. Sorry I have to beg to differ a bit. It’s certainly possible that it was overhyped, but I happen to fall into a group that had a real need for flock (or, rather, what flock could eventually become)

    For example, I’m in between casual blogger who’s happy with the web interfaces and serious blogger who has a freestanding application to handle it.

    I’m pretty much brand new to delicious and flickr, they sounded interesting but kinda complicated until I heard that Flock was pretty much “geared” for them. Likewise RSS feeds, etc.

    I don’t think it’s a “mass-market” app because most people are happy with the passive, straightforward surfing provided by IE and the fox.

    I’d say something like
    Flock:Internet::TiVO:Airwaves

    By Matt C on November 2, 2005 5:07 pm

38. “…*sigh* Same responses over and over again, what is Bart’s vision though? Nobody seems to be able to tell me what this magical vision is in a language that makes sense…”

    Really, I think that this was explained clearly enough.

    So either:

    1. You understand the concept and motivations and rationale behind the project but you are not pursuaded by the need for the product and you are just posturing as if “the message isn’t made clear”

    or

    2. you have have a pre-established bias for whatever reason and you are determined not to “get it” at whatever cost,

    If the former option is true that is a bit understandable (minus the rhetorical posturing) given that there is no product that will appeal to everyone.

    But, given that you basically are stating (without having tried the preview) that the Flock project was a failure before it started I fear that the latter option is tha case. And that is the only true sense in which “Flock Never Stood a Chance”

    By Inkblot on November 2, 2005 9:59 pm

39. Scrivs, i love what youre fighting for. this is the same thing that happened with Ning (wow, remember that one?). People think they need to make things easier, integrated, etc. What does all of that add up to? Changing habits. And if im just changing my habit to something only marginally easier/better, then im not going to do it.

    Bottom line? Flock=Firefox with a few new prompts that let you add a blog post. Uhhhh, ok. Give me 1 commsci student and some Moz code.

    Bigger bottom line? BusinessWeek shouldnt write an article on something it knows nothing about. and blogosphere Press should not come before the product based on “revolutionary” comments from its promoters.

    By brandon on November 2, 2005 11:27 pm

40. “Why would a normal home user be enticed to switch over to another browser when they just got used to using Firefox over IE?”

    “I can’t think of any reasons why a company would need to switch from Firefox over to Flock.”

    I think you’re missing the point. Flock isn’t trying to be the browser of choice for every current Firefox user. It only targets maybe 10-20% of Firefox users, those that are deep within Web 2.0 activities, know what del.icio.us is, maintain a blog, use technorati, etc.

    However, I do agree that there was a bit too much hype around Flock… so much so that it got knocked down by a lot of people just because they’ve heard it too much and its too short of anything spectacular for the average web user.

    Read this Flock review if you want to see where I’m coming from.

    By Paul Stamatiou on November 3, 2005 12:25 am

41. Even though Flock may have been overhyped, I do believe their product offers some value. As a casual blogger and new user to del.icio.us, Flock has helped me get into and take advantage of new areas of the web that I had not experienced before. I have not really tried flickr, but now I probably will thanks to Flock’s integration.

    While I realize that all of this could be done with some firefox extensions, it is ridiculous to make the user of a browser hunt around the web and Mozilla’s site to find the N number of tools that make Firefox work in the exact way that Flock does. On top top of that, there are so many competing extensions that do the same thing, the user is forced to either test and compare multiple extensions and waste time figuring out what is best.

    As Scrivs pointed out there are 20M blogs that currently exist, but what about the growing population of blogs/bloggers? Flock will definitely make it much easier for a new person to jump into the Web 2.0 world. Instead of going to N different sites and finding N different extensions for Firefox, now the user has to only setup 1 tool. That is the power of Flock.

    It is also ridiculous how Scrivs has blasted a product that he has admittedly never tried. Granted he has his Firefox setup to do everything Flock does, so there is no real momentum to switch, but Scrivs missed the boat on Flock’s vision. The arrogant nature of his posts, sound like an engineer’s response to how design and usability take a backseat to the features of a product. Scrivs, according to your logic, where was the need for 9rules.com? Couldn’t I just google my way through finding all the content I thought was useful on the web? To me it sounds like 9rules and Flock do similar things for the web, all be it in different genres.

    I do believe the developers of Flock need to make their vision more clear and explain the benfits on their website, but there is a need for their product.

    /K

    By Ken on November 3, 2005 12:07 pm

42. Ken and I are kindred souls. The core generalization is flawed: “I personally don’t have a need for this thing” == “there’s no need for this thing”

    And btw who exactly is being hurt by Flock’s existence? Why attack it?

    By Matt C on November 3, 2005 1:26 pm

43. #36 | R. Marie Cox
    At this point Flock reminds me of those keyboards that have extra buttons for things like “Internet” and “Email”.

    I couldn’t agree more. That’s exactly what it feels like. And here’s my opinion on those keyboards:

    - They don’t add that much value for me, personally.
    - They also don’t hurt me personally, and I’m sure that someone out there might like them.
    - I’m not going to trade in my extra-button-less keyboard for one with Internet and E-mail buttons as long as my current one is working fine.
    - If people like those keyboards and manufacturers like making those keyboards, then more power to them. Keep on keepin’ on.
    - Perhaps one day they’ll add an extra button that WILL be of value to me, so i’ll keep my eye on the state of keyboard development in case that happens.

    The same thing goes for Flock. I certainly didn’t intend to attack it, so if anyone took my comments that way, then i apologize. I only meant to say that right now it doesn’t provide a lot of value to me over my existing tools, and that I’m not quite understanding what the vision is for the future of this product beyond what I’ve already seen. By all mean, the Flock people should keep on keepin’ on, and I’m sure they’ll find some people that find Flock useful. Hell, i may even be one of them someday, if and when they add that “extra button” that adds value for me.

    By Jeff Croft on November 3, 2005 2:32 pm

44. One more thing: in fairness to the Flock people, they are not responsible for a lot of the hype that has gone on. It’s too bad that Flock was over-hyped and it’s current incarnation doesn’t seem to deliver on the hype for a lot of us — but it’s not entirely the Flock folks’ fault.

    By Jeff Croft on November 3, 2005 2:35 pm

45. Getting articles in BusinessWeek and Wired isn’t their fault? It seems they used their hype capabilities to the fullest. And don’t get me started on making the website difficult because the product isn’t ready for the public. Think the public will come back to something that wasn’t easy the first time around?

    Oh and the “don’t criticize something that obviously isn’t finished” spiel that I keep hearing as well. Don’t make something public if you aren’t ready to hear people’s reactions.

    By Scrivs on November 3, 2005 2:40 pm

46. I tried Flock, and it was deathly slow importing my del.icio.us and couldn’t load up my blog. I also couldn’t see how to have multiple blogs set up in it. It offered me no value above my Camino which is loaded up with bookmarklets.

    I can see a market for it, once the bugs are dealt with, but it’s not the alpha geeks like us, it’s people like my boyfriend who vaguely think blogging is a good thing but haven’t a clue where to start. He doesn’t want to mess about getting all sorts of extensions for Firefox, he’d be quite happy with Flock and WordPress.com.

    Getting it on Newsnight in the UK was a good start at reaching those people, but overall Flock still seems to be going after people like me who’ve been at the web 2.0 coolaid :D

    By Mary-Ann Horley on November 3, 2005 4:29 pm

47. Scrivs-

    I don’t know how, or even if, they went about getting the articles in BusinessWeek and Wired, but I was actually referring to the hype amongst bloggers that wasn’t all their fault.

    I agree with your other point — if someone’s public, then it’s fair game for criticism.

    By Jeff Croft on November 3, 2005 5:35 pm

48. “One more thing: in fairness to the Flock people, they are not responsible for a lot of the hype that has gone on.”

    Right. What a joke! Holding multiple lavish parties in several west-coast states and inviting industry leaders, pundits and cool kids, and giving behind closed door invites to flock for popular bloggers wasn’t their doing at all. The buzz was all just an accident. Whatever.

    By buzz not flock's fault? wtf!? on November 3, 2005 6:11 pm

49. I dont think WIRED and Businessweek write about random 3 month old companies and the hype is not just by the Flock team but also by BizWeek and WIRED!

    As an example of an app that didnt fulfill my ‘need’ is Flickr. Flickr was never on my horizon. I never needed it so I never bothered to use it. I finally got an account to view other’s pics but never realised why I would need a Flickr account to post mine.

    But then gradually, I found it making sense. Somehow I liked to tag and put notes on my pictures, liked to see pictures of friends and commenting on them. Now, I have completely switched over to Flickr for all my pics.

    Perhaps you just have to type the url and download flock and try it. There are thousands of apps that you do try anyways even though you dont ‘need’ them.

    Even if you think there is no ‘need’ to be solved, think of the thousands of users who still use ofoto or ‘myspaces’ despite these not solving any ‘need’ but giving more problems! ‘Need’ isnt an issue, but market adoption is.

    Give these guys a chance, they are doing something unique and fun. If 9rules were to be judged in three months, I do not think you would be able to get a decent audience, that you have now, for your opinions on Flock!

    By divya on November 4, 2005 1:36 am

50. Here’s the weird thing with Flock. It survived on my computer for all of an hour. My Firefox browser with plug-ins does all the same things. Flock is redundent, Flock adds nothing of value to a free product, not a good buisness idea.

    By Jeff on November 4, 2005 6:52 am

51. I see Flock as competing with the likes of Maxthon, not IE (or Firefox for that matter).

    By AkaXakA on November 4, 2005 12:43 pm

52. Okay so Firefox just reached the 11.5% user mark. (I think that figure is correct, if not, my apologies.) How did Flock think they would either muscule in on Firefox’s share (again, if you just switched browsers why would you want to switch to another one so similar?) or gain some of Microsoft’s share.

    It took Firefox forever in web-time to get to where it is today, and a lot of that is because it’s open source, so there’s a lot of diverse brain power behind it.

    This just seems like a very poor/risky (and by risky I mean crazy shot in the dark) business model.

    By Beth on November 4, 2005 1:47 pm

53. There is a major difference between features and benefits. Flock has some nice features, but it needs to clearly articulate the benefits for its users. A car might have many features, but its core benefit is to transport its passengers. A browser enables the user to surf the web. Flock has to demostrate it can make the web surfing experience better for its user; and make blogging/social bookmarking/photo-sharing easier.

    From the beta version of Flock, we didn’t see significant improvements in the above benefits when comparing to Firefox.

    By Dave on November 4, 2005 3:55 pm

54. LOL … Well, it’s obvious to me that at least one - if not all - of the Flock developers have had sex with this guys girlfriend/boyfriend :D

    And why would she do that? Because the Flock guys come across as cool, hip, and even accessorise with a Web 2.0 halo … this author, though, is a bitter old man on a war-vets pension. I can respect that, though.

    But hey! You claim to be hip to all the machinations/trends/market-gaps that define Flocks place in the world - *yet you do not understand what they mean by “social browser”*. Heck, I guarantee that you know more about technology/computers/internet than me, but even I know what is being suggested by “social browser”. I suspect, though, that this statement, along with your whole article, is merely being disingenuous.

    You make the mistake of thinking your opinion has some sort of Objective Truth and that you’ve killed any rationale or reason for Flock existing because your opinion holds it as unneccessary. I’m sorry, Poindexter, but the fact that Flock filled a need for me (and, despite your disingenuity, I’m sure I’m not the only one) reduces your whole argument to a pile of shit. Blogging is a pain in the arse (at least on Linux), and I’m positive that Flock will be - in a very short time - *exactly* what I want and need in a browser. Something that can present/process/create information and media.

    You think it’s useless and have never used it. I think it’s useful and I use it all the time. Where do we go from here?

    By mrmachine on November 5, 2005 3:33 pm

55. I just stumbled across this blog by accident, and I think there are two very important key points that were missed:

    1) Perhaps Flock’s potential edge (I say potential because from my testing of it, it hasn’t been realized yet) that it is the only non-IE alternative; perhaps it’s that it aspiring to be the premiere non-IE alternative.

    2) The only version of Flock that has been released thus far is a developer beta version. You can’t really judge the final product since there simply isn’t any to judge.

    I downloaded it, installed it, and tested it out and so far I’m not overly impressed. I see flaws in it that I’ve never seen in any of the other major browsers, and it didn’t import bookmarks cleanly (it crashed).

    But I see some pluses:

    It uses a lot less resource than FF EVER did (although that could be because it’s Beta, so I reserve judgement).

    The skin is much easier on the eyes, I find.

    The “Report a Broken Website” idea is one of the most subtle, yet brilliant ideas I’ve seen in a browser. The idea of being able to report a site that performs properly in a few browsers but not in theirs is a way for them to make their product friendlier to as many sites as possible and therefore improve the browser to the point where it meets or exceeds the others.

    I don’t think there’s enough right now to declare Flock the preeminent browser, but I certainly think it’s a good start.

    By Toronto Web Design - Adam on November 5, 2005 4:16 pm

56. Record this for posterity:

    “I haven’t tried Flock yet but I think I’ll just pick a side…”

    hehe

    By john on November 5, 2005 5:24 pm

57. This is one of the most ignorant blogs I’ve ever read. Nice work! Did you just want people to visit your blog and post nasty comments or were you just feeling self-righteous in your fidelity towards Firefox? ;)

    peace, metta,
    core

    By core on November 5, 2005 11:06 pm

58. Scrivs,

    this was a shameful post… I am surprised you still have it up.

    if your intent was to Troll for Traffic then it was a successful post so ignore what I have to say below.

    When I read the line:

    “I have yet to actually try Flock and therein lies part of the problem.”

    I pretty well realized that the rest of the article would be unfounded… and it was.

    Today is a sad day for blogging and 9rules.

    By TrollingForTraffic on November 5, 2005 11:20 pm

59. “I have yet to actually try Flock and therein lies part of the problem. ”

    you arent’ kidding….that’s EXACTLY the problem, ya knob gobbler. you review stuff you’ve never used?

    By damian on November 6, 2005 1:24 am

60. ….We started Flock to build tools that empower people and smooth out some of the more hairy parts of living and working online. As it is, we live and breathe this stuff everyday and wanted better tools to do the things that we love doing online…..

    Great news!

    Lets start with something really cutting edge and everday- no not inline blogging, or del.ici.ous links or tags, the Flikr toolbar or even the RSS feeds with on the fly aggregation..How about BOOKMARKS! You remember them right?

    Wow, theres something that would really make the HAIRY parts of our everyday lives really smooth. BOOKMARKS that imported where they were supposed to be without glitches. That would be so… dare I say… empowering?

    By PaulT on November 6, 2005 7:03 am

61. I am guessing that such a colorful way of expressing oneself (comment #59|damian) can only come from one of our larger cities. knob gobbler? Gotta laugh at that one. :-)

    On a more serious note, I think the Flock group is making an enormous contibution to the open source movement in general. This helps FF and will make it look at itself. The new code can be used by anyone. It’s not a matter of choosing a side, rather one of having sides to choose. This is good for everyone, no? There is little doubt in my mind that those who use Flock for a while (days not hours) will understand how fascinating, innovative, and useful a little browser this really is; but, don’t think you are going to wing it for a little while, and,after a few mouse clicks, have any real understanding of it at all. This IS something new folks, and there is a small price in time to pay. As for importing bookmarks, maybe these people are doing you the favor of concentrating on and emphasizing something else which *may* be more important than importing your crappy bookmarks. :-) But then, that would be impossible right?

    -inf

    By rain on November 6, 2005 12:22 pm

62. Downloaded Flock played around with it for a bit,
    got bored and went back to firefox.
    What will happen if or when Google brings out a
    browser in the future.

    ????????

    Warrick

    By Warrick on November 6, 2005 11:58 pm

63. I downloaded Flock and tried it. The first thing I noticed is the really cool interface. Love it. Its blogging features are quite nice too.

    Since it is still a developer beta version, I would stick with FF and IE for the time being.

    By Jacky on November 7, 2005 5:16 am

64. I think people are missing the point of this blog entry. I see it as more of scrivs pointing out the flaws in the company’s business model. Honestly it does sort of remind you of the old days of the dot com boom. A whole lotta hype before anything tangible has even been delivered. There website makes no attempt to develop a company identity, maybe you guys should try to get your buddy jon hicks to work on that for ya. The whole website is really over-trendy and it really lacks substance. Bart’s blog posts seem to clear things up a bunch but why aren’t they used on flock’s actual site?

    By mike on November 7, 2005 9:38 pm

65. Thank you Mike, thank you. That’s all I can say. Someone finally gets it. Only took about a week.

    By Scrivs on November 7, 2005 9:44 pm

66. Just tried out Flock; and agree with Scrivs that there is a flawed business model going on. Though it may be an intresting take on a development model, as it may have answered a problem I didn’t know I had.

    I’ve got to introduce some non-blogging staff to bloging and tagging so their stuff can be integrated into a school site. A “one-package-does-it” solution like Flock that only needs a little help from the IT dept to get it running, may be our way foward.

    …but that sort of stuff isn’t going to make them the money.

    By Brian on November 8, 2005 6:58 am

67. Ok so I’m jumping in late to this but here are my thoughts:

    Are they trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist? Maybe, but then again everyone thought Google was doing that too. Remember how search seemed as if it was good enough and no one could figure out the business model?

    Here’s what I think the bet of the company is:

    1. That more and more people are putting content up on the web today and that trend will continue. This includes blog posts, pictures, bookmarks etc.
    2. That people will want and need a better way to manage and accomplish these tasks as time goes on and that Flock will be it.

    I think that this is a good bet, at the very least it’s not a stupid bet.

    Yes - the product may be early
    Yes - there will be challenges for the team to get adoption.
    Yes - Absolutely the web experience needs to evolve and I’m glad someone is working on this.

    Chris

    By Chris Law on November 8, 2005 6:54 pm

68. I may not buy their business model, but what I find more troubling is how it locks you into using specific services… to have a browser with “//del.icio.us” and “//flickr.com” welded to the core of it really seems to break the “small pieces, loosely joined” philosophy. I articulated these thoughts a bit more here: http://uwmike.com/articles/2005/11/08/two-point-oh

    At any rate, if the problem they’re trying to solve is that tracking down interesting extensions and getting them installed is hard/tedious, then what they really should be building is a plugin synchronizer… something that you can install once on a browser anywhere, and then it will automatically grab the most recent version of every extension in your “profile”. (Which, of course, would be cool, since there’s then the tremendous opportunity to recommend extensions based on existing selections…)

    By Mike Purvis on November 8, 2005 7:26 pm

69. Flock was not made to make money nor to fight IE7.
    Flock was made with the sole and only purpose to weaken Firefox.
    Somehow, there’s MS behind flock.

    Flock will never make it as a real software but it doesn’t matter… It will never steal a single user to IE7, just a few to Firefox.

    Flock is there just to show to the average IE user that the next battle will be among IE7 and a bunch of other elitist small/medium browsers without any chance. So that the impression won’t be IE against one big opponent.

    It’s all politics. At MS they learned that having only one rival as Netscape, kept their enemy alive more than it would normally have.
    My theory.

    By buzzer on November 9, 2005 8:08 am

70. downloaded it…tried it out…

    the del.ico.us bookmark feature is a waste of time (IMHO).

    interface is cool…my favorite thing is the ability to reorder your tabs. I’ve been wanting a tabbed browser to do this for a long time!

    it’s still in beta…so I guess we’ll see if it catches on…my money’s on “no”, but you never know.

    By Shane Shepherd on November 9, 2005 11:51 pm

71. reorder your tabs? Firefox does that. Not even mentioning what can Firefox do with the right extensions. Flock has no reason to exists except to make a big favour to IE.

    By buzzer on November 10, 2005 3:31 am

72. I like both Flock and Firefox.

    I used FF for some time, but now I’ve switched to Flock full-time and I just like it.

    The hype doesn’t matter and, for that matter, neither does the backlash.

    By Jase on November 10, 2005 6:06 pm

73. Myself, I am impressed with the developer preview. I agree that the branding problem with the “social browser” is sketchy, but Flock is a good name. Okay, so you haven’t tried it yet. Go ahead and try it (need I give you a link?) and see how you like it. Link it up to your WordPress (or whatever) XMLRPC.php file. You can never jump to conclusions.

    Thanks,
    Shuai King

    By Shuai King on November 10, 2005 6:44 pm

74. “I have yet to actually try Flock”

    And that makes you an expert on it eh? I can see why your blog is so popular :P

    By hostyle on November 18, 2005 7:44 am

75. Bloggin: I tried it for blogging. The only 2 entries on my blog that aren’t valid are those produced with flock. The markup it generates is simply terrible.

    Delicious: The integration is unecessary, since you can have way more powerful tools with the right extensions in Firefox already. No need to switch just because of that.

    Flickr: I don’t have flickr.. why? i have webspace to put my pics on. most bloggers do.

    Shelf: Nice feature to put things aside, but it encourage bloggers to do hotlinking. Drag images from a site for integratation in a blogpost is a no-go to me.

    General: Is there any way to bookmark without “staring” a page, which publishes the bookmark to delicious? Also.. where are the sidebars at all? The favorites are fullscreen and the usability is terrible.

    Conclusion: This is FF1.5 with some built in extensions, which are also no match compared to equivalent existing in Firefox.

    Nice try tho.. i’ll give it a second chance once they go for final.

    By Kjell on November 19, 2005 12:30 pm

76. This is the browser I would give my granma for her first adventures into the internet. It’s sleek, pedagogic and doesn’t require you to get any plugins. Or even know the URL of a searchengine.

    Problem is, the audience they’re aiming for are the exact same people that are still stuck using Explorer despite every single alternative being superior. The people nerdy enough to have heard of Flock will probably feel personally insulted by it holding their hands and trying to redirect them places.

    By elephant on February 3, 2008 10:39 pm

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