By now most of you know that Flock, a trendy new Mozilla-based "social web browser", has gone live. Because it's said to be a quintessential Web 2.0 application, I feel duty-bound to try it out. So I've downloaded it and will give it a go as my main browser for a while. I won't however jump to conclusions and give you a half-baked review right now. But fear not, for there are plenty of great reviews around - including from members of the Web 2.0 Workgroup: TechCrunch, WeBreakStuff, SolutionWatch, Dion Hinchcliffe. ZDNet Aussie has a good write-up too.
There's also an interesting post by Bart Decrem, founder and CEO of Flock, in which he defends their choice to create a brand new web browser instead of just extending Firefox:
"One of the most appealing aspects of building on the Mozilla platform is that we can build on top of a platform that is designed, developed, and maintained by top engineering talent at Mozilla, IBM, Sun, Red Hat, Google and hundreds of community volunteers. Flock is a small startup, and our business model is premised on being able to build on top of all that work."
Fair enough. In my own testing of Flock, I'm going to focus on whether Flock will be suitable for mainstream, non-geek users. I'd like to think that if Flock is really a flagship Web 2.0 product, then it won't just end up being used by bloggers and Slashdot readers. Web 2.0 has to reach out to mainstream people, before the blogosphere implodes from all the 2.0 hype and anti-hype (the latter is worse than the former IMHO, because it has the added fuel of cynicism).
So 'Will Flock ever be mainstream' is going to be my angle when exploring this new Web 2.0 browser. I'll let you know how that goes.
UPDATE: Ben Barren picks up on my current 'disruptive' theme and asks: "My 'is this real disruption or not' question with flock is not whether it is an extension on Firefox, but will people really switch?" Ben's post is well worth reading. Also check out this BusinessWeek article in which Bart Decrem says he "hopes to have 100 million users within five years." Well, that would make it mainstream - if it happens. Also I meant to say: congrats to the Flock team on building and releasing what on the surface is an innovative browser play.
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Hi,
My two cents on Flock...
One of the primary benefit of social software is that it can take advantage of the collective intelligence of the community or the 'The wisdom of the crowds '. In this respect Flock has not yet reached the mark :-(
I can tag and blog stuff from within the browser. Thus a user who is doing the above stuff (pursuing selfish interests) builds collective value for the rest of the users as a side effect. But the same user is not able to reap the resultant benefits.
An example of how a user can benefit from the generated wisdom is like Outfoxed, where the folk / community suggests better useful sites.
There is an article at the following URL that describes a better way of creating a social browser. The application is called FolkMind.
http://www.chiramattel.com/george/blog/2005/10/14/
folkmind_a_killer_app_for_the_1.html
Posted by: George Chiramattel | October 21, 2005 9:21 AM
Let's look at it this way. Firefox hasn't hit the 25% that we all thought it would. Only thing Flock will be doing is taking from that pie. The technologies within Flock are things that the developers thought were "hip, cool, etc." But how many people outside our market use del.icio.us? Flickr? How about anything else that'll be developed as a top-bar?
There are a lot of things that need to be hashed out in order for Flock to _work_ .. it's a whole other thing to find out if Flock was worth getting venture capital.
Posted by: Bryan | October 21, 2005 9:41 AM
Richard,
Just want to say that I think this new perspective on the recent technological innovation is excellent. Approaching it from the a larger perspective that tries to predict how the market as a whole will view certain technological advancements and new products is the way to go! Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Jared | October 21, 2005 10:32 AM
As a tech-geek "sales guy" I think the most important things in your post were these comments:
"...whether Flock will be suitable for mainstream, non-geek users..."
and
"Web 2.0 has to reach out to mainstream people, before the blogosphere implodes from all the 2.0 hype and anti-hype..."
I don't know that word-of-mouth has the horsepower to "revolutionize" the way we work with/on the web.
I'm seeing so many great tools emerging online, but everyday joes are simply NOT hearing about these things. The tech advocates have got to open their mouths to the still-mainstream workforce and stop thinking the technology can do all the talking!
Posted by: Brandon | October 21, 2005 11:24 AM
see my review of the Flock at my blog
Posted by: Ashish Hanwadikar | October 21, 2005 1:23 PM