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Flock is a new web browser based on Mozilla (the same as Firefox) that allows you to keep track of all your social networking from one location. It’s an interesting solution but is it one that people are actually asking for?
How well does this really work? Let’s find out… (this post was written from within Flock)
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written on January 19th, 2010 5:35 pm
Ok, so that’s a very limited test but it does look like Flock may become an interesting tool for social butterflies.
It allows you to update all your social networks from one application. Want to post to your blog or update Twitter or pop some photos on Flickr or even just happily waste time on Facebook? You can – all from one window and its not a one way street either. Once you allow it to log in to your accounts it will push feeds and tweets and anything else of relevance straight into your browser.
On top of this its a fully functional web browser that lets you search multiple sources without ever leaving the comfort of Flock. Want to search for dancing kittens in YouTube? Well, obviously you want to search for that and now its easier than ever. And it does so much more.
The big question is will it make any headway in a very dominated market? Possibly is my answer. Its certainly a fun tool and may well be right up your street. I suspect it could gain ground with teenage girls and several other key social networking groups but the problem is the only ones likely to know of it or go to the trouble of downloading it are the geeks and techies who by definition dont know any girls.
Firefox gained ground rapidly as a protest vote to Internet Explorer. It did all the same things but better.
And that’s where Flock falls down. It isn’t as comprehensive a web browser as the big players and its slower (probably ok for most people but for me it became irritating quite quickly) so by pitching itself as a hybrid-browser rather than a personal social portal it may come unstuck and of course its only a matter of time before Google and friends start including this kind of functionality and then it will be gameover.