Future of Browsers: Interview with Flock's Geoffrey Arone
Today I interviewed Geoffrey Arone, the co-founder of social Web browser Flock.com. Flock recently released its official beta,
which they call version 0.7. They're currently positioning their product as a mainstream
browser which enables people to share and create online. Flock is specifically targeting
people who use social networking media tools like MySpace and YouTube.
The interview [20 mins, 9.7MB] kicks off a new series on my ZDNet blog, called Browsers 2.0. In that series I'll be exploring 2006-era browsers and seeing what is available in the browser market - and what's coming soon with the likes of IE7 and Firefox 2.0.
What interests me most about Flock these days is its goal to become one of the big browsers. Geoffrey said they're planning to go-live (out of beta) in October this year and he is confident that Flock can become a big player in what is a very tough market. He said:
"If we continue to respond to what our users are telling us and get out there and partner with the right folks, absolutely we will be [mainstream]. I want us to become increasingly part of the dialog of: what option do I have to participate online."
Also Geoffrey is sometimes reluctant to call Flock a browser, because "it's a passive term". He said "the way our user testing is showing people interacting with Flock, it's anything but passive."
I mentioned that a lot of Web apps these days are becoming cross-platform and cross-device, so does he think the browser will morph into something different - in other words, where is the browser in general headed? Geoffrey replied:
"I view the browser as a vehicle for creating your online identity. So people are increasingly going towards mobile and to some extent the living room. Right now it's certainly not in our short-term plans. But I do see the browser as being the primary interface to your life online."
Check out the whole audio interview, because we delve into some of those broader browser issues a lot more. Geoffrey said that my questions were the best he’s had in any interview about Flock (which is a nice compliment!).
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I'm probably not looking in the right place, but Flock seems to be a "Flickr browser" mainly. Why would the Myspace and Youtube crowd use Flock? It doesn't even have those two in the Accounts and Services.
The blogging support is nice though... have to poke my bloghost about that.
I tried flock several months ago and didn't see anything that would make me want to leave Firefox. I use the Perfomancing For Firefox extension for my blogging needs.
I do think it is a smart move to target the Myspace and YouTube crowd. If they could get the active posters to those sites, they could at least build a fairly decent following. Unfortunately, I don't see any way to use Flock to post on Myspace or submit to YouTube. They do mention that you can download the videos from YouTube using Flock, but is that really that big of a reason to switch? As slow as Myspace is, if they could find a way to make posting possible, I'm sure some of the big blog posters would think about starting to use Flock.
Like Mike, I had tried flock a while ago but this summer I had the opportunity to give it another go - as I was preparing for a workshop. I'm a flickr user primarily and hate myspace, so I haven't had the roadblocks Mike has run into but I love the blogging set-up - the fact that I can post to any of the half dozen blogs that I participate in from one place is simply awesome to me! Having worked with folks this summer who don't have a good understanding of how to get images into blog postings, flock really made that a much easier task for them - allowing them to focus on the content and purpose of their postings, not the technicalities of posting.