Ever since Flock was founded, we have envisioned the role of the browser to be much greater than an application that simply lets you view your favorite websites. Throughout the many versions of Flock released to the public to date, we have focused on key innovations that help you stay connected with your favorite sites, people, media and content so that you can be a happier, more informed and plugged-in person.

OpenID is an open standard for shared authentication across many sites. Simply, it’s your free, single digital identity that you can use to sign up for and log into many sites without dealing with all the paperwork. This idea has been around for a while, but only until recently has there been a broad enough adoption of both OpenID providers as well as sites supporting OpenID.

<object width="400" height="225">
<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2402686&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1"><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2402686&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="225"></object>

Although there has been quiet momentum and support building across the web for OpenID for some time, it was the folks at Vidoop that identified the need for the browser to play a critical role as the common denominator to best serve as the broker between a user’s OpenIDs and the increasing number of sites that support this standard for authentication. Vidoop also founded the Identity In Browser open source project (IDIB) and championed the vision for a browser that could help users discover and manage OpenID’s easily from the comfort of their own browser view.

Flock was introduced to Vidoop by the good folks at MySpace, and without a moments delay a meeting between the three parties was put together at our offices in Victoria, B.C. Our engineers all agreed on the critical role that Flock could play in aiding the adoption and management of OpenID and the result of the brainstorm was an extension we’re calling “OpenID for Flock”. This extension is a reference design for better Discovery, and Management of Identity in the browser and is Flock’s flagship contribution to the IDIB project.

The OpenID for Flock extension is available on our own extension site, as well as on the IDIB group page. We encourage everyone to watch the video above, download Flock 2.0, and install the extension to experience how gratifying it is to traverse the web and log-in to sites seamlessly with the assistance of the OpenID standard.

We’ve enjoyed our collaboration with the MySpace and Vidoop team on this project, and look forward to hearing about your thoughts and interest in getting involved with this project.

Once you’ve had a chance to experience OpenID in Flock, we’d appreciate it if you would help spread the word about Flock and OpenID. The more sites that support the OpenID standard, the better the web becomes for all of us.

-Cheers

Dan Burkhart
VP of Marketing at Flock
Get Flock and Meet Your New Favorite Browser

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Tags: openid, flock, browser, myspace, vidoop, identity in browser, idib, open source, extension

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Hey Flockstars,

I just had to share this video with you.  Flock's CEO Shawn Hardin stopped by the TechNow show (as seen on several California NBC stations) to talk about Flock 2.0, and I think it turned out great!

What I love about this video is how they deconstruct the browser piece by piece.  Flock can be intimidating at first (something we're constantly working on improving), but the way they split up the features is a fantastic way to introduce them.

Also, I think that's probably the coolest that Shawn's name has ever looked.

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: Flock, NBC, TV, browser, TechNow, Shawn Hardin, video

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Hey Flockstars,

I just had to share this video with you.  Flock's CEO Shawn Hardin stopped by the TechNow show (as seen on several California NBC stations) to talk about Flock 2.0, and I think it turned out great!

What I love about this video is how they deconstruct the browser piece by piece.  Flock can be intimidating at first (something we're constantly working on improving), but the way they split up the features is a fantastic way to introduce them.

Also, I think that's probably the coolest that Shawn's name has ever looked.

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: Flock, NBC, TV, browser, TechNow, Shawn Hardin, video

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Hey Flockstars,

I want to clarify Flock's intentions and the new direction of the Flock extensions page, extensions.flock.com  (EFC).

We haven't stopped hosting extensions, we've just simplified the back-end submission process, and content that we host.  One of the great bonuses of this is our new ability to host Flock themes.

Flock still embraces extensions and themes, but we will leverage Mozilla's secure back-end hosting environment by encouraging you to get extensions from addons.mozilla.org.  We???ll be dedicating our resources to responding to your needs and adding new and exciting capabilities onto the Flock browser. 

The broad majority of Firefox extensions have always worked in Flock. Most Flockstars are aware of this and do not visit EFC for their extension needs.  With the shift in focus to content that is Flock-specific, EFC now serves the niche that addons.mozilla.org does not: we provide extensions that enhance the many specific features that are unique to Flock.

Almost all of the developers that have their extensions removed from EFC had their extensions hosted on addons.mozilla.org already.  We continue to support development of extensions for Flock and Firefox, and the developers who have interacted with EFC in the past continue to talk with us about the future of extensions for Flock.  New developers are encouraged to check out our documentation and join us on IRC.
 
I hope this clarifies our position.  You can still have all the feature benefits of Flock and take advantage of available Firefox extensions.

Community feedback is of the utmost importance to us and will always guide the development of Flock, our website, our extensions and our company.  As always, I welcome your comments and emails.

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: Flock, extensions, extensions.flock.com, developers, EFC, themes

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Hey Flockstars,

I want to clarify Flock's intentions and the new direction of the Flock extensions page, extensions.flock.com  (EFC).

We haven't stopped hosting extensions, we've just simplified the back-end submission process, and content that we host.  One of the great bonuses of this is our new ability to host Flock themes.

Flock still embraces extensions and themes, but we will leverage Mozilla's secure back-end hosting environment by encouraging you to get extensions from addons.mozilla.org.  We’ll be dedicating our resources to responding to your needs and adding new and exciting capabilities onto the Flock browser. 

The broad majority of Firefox extensions have always worked in Flock. Most Flockstars are aware of this and do not visit EFC for their extension needs.  With the shift in focus to content that is Flock-specific, EFC now serves the niche that addons.mozilla.org does not: we provide extensions that enhance the many specific features that are unique to Flock.

Almost all of the developers that have their extensions removed from EFC had their extensions hosted on addons.mozilla.org already.  We continue to support development of extensions for Flock and Firefox, and the developers who have interacted with EFC in the past continue to talk with us about the future of extensions for Flock.  New developers are encouraged to check out our documentation and join us on IRC.
 
I hope this clarifies our position.  You can still have all the feature benefits of Flock and take advantage of available Firefox extensions.

Community feedback is of the utmost importance to us and will always guide the development of Flock, our website, our extensions and our company.  As always, I welcome your comments and emails.

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: Flock, extensions, extensions.flock.com, developers, EFC, themes

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Less than a year after the initial release of Flock 1.0, we are proud to release Flock 2.0. Flock 2.0 has been through three beta cycles, enjoyed tremendous feedback from our community of users and is a significant step forward in capability and quality. And, this final release of Flock 2.0 has some great new capabilities that have not been made available in any prior 2.0 beta release. Let me take a moment to tell you what to expect in Flock 2.0.

Flock 2.0 is built on the latest Firefox 3 technology from Mozilla, so you’ll find it to be snappy, safe and easier to use. Flock 2.0 also comes with some great new features not found in any other browser today.

First of all, we’re very pleased to announce that we’ve added MySpace as a major new addition to our suite of 23 other popular services integrated within Flock. MySpace was the #1 most requested service from our community. Now MySpace lovers can stay up to date with their MySpace friends and activities no matter where they are on the web. MySpace users will also find that Flock offers the easiest way to upload photos, insert photos and videos in MySpace comment fields and share most any web content by simply dragging and dropping it into the Flock People sidebar.

Flock 2 also incorporates Media RSS (MRSS) detection capability so that you can subscribe to media streams being made available by websites, even if the site isn’t one of the 23 integrated with Flock. Once you’ve subscribed to a media stream via Media RSS, you will be notified about the arrival of new photos and videos posted by your favorite sites and they will flow right into your MyWorld page in Flock, so you never miss out on updates to your favorite media streams.  We’ll go into this great new capability in depth in a later blog post.

For the first time, we are also making themes available for Flock 2. Check out extensions.flock.com and install a theme to customize the look of Flock. We’re shipping today with two new themes, and will be adding many more over the coming weeks and months.

If you’re already a Flock user – thank you! And, get ready for the best version of Flock ever! If you are new to Flock, give Flock 2.0 a test drive and discover what users from 165 countries and territories all around the world already know – with Flock you will rock the web! With the latest Firefox 3 architecture under the hood, you’ve now got the latest technology with the most innovative features available in any browser today.  If you’ve been using the 2.0 beta, we highly recommend you upgrade…there’s a lot in this release that you haven’t seen yet.

Check it out and let us know what you think. Your feedback has been essential in developing Flock 2, and we have been growing with the strong global support of satisfied Flockstars everywhere who have been telling their friends: “get ready to meet your new favorite browser”.

-Cheers

Shawn Hardin, Chief Flockstar
shawn at Flock dot com

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Tags: flock, browser, 2.0, myspace, Media RSS, integration, themes

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Flock isn't about technology. Flock is about a feeling.

While the technology powers Flock, the reason you and I love this browser is because it makes the web fun and easy again.  Using Flock gets me excited about going online, keeps me in better contact with my friends, and makes my day easier.

With the new look of Flock's homepage and tour, we're fully embracing this feeling.  We scoured Flickr for days finding the perfect images that represented the fun, freedom, and ease of Flock. We've been all smiles viewing these pages day after day as we prepped them for launch.

Of course, nothing is permanent on the web and we're going to want to keep our homepage fresh with some new images in a few months.  Which brings us to...

We want to take this fun, relaxed feeling even farther and put YOUR photos on the homepage!  Nobody knows the joy that is Flock better than you, and we're sure that you've got tons of photos of you and your friends that will shine on our homepage.

All you have to do is submit your photos.  We'll choose the finalists, and your fellow Flockstars will vote on who will be the winners!

The winner of the Flocktography Photo Challenge will have their photo featured on our homepage, and will also receive a collection of awesome Flock swag!

Entering the Challenge

Each Flockstar can submit up to 3 photos to our Flocktography group on Flickr.

Photos must be 917px wide by 385px tall.

Any person prominently featured in these photos should have given verbal or signed approval to be featured on flock.com.

Winning the Challenge

A group of qualified folks at Flock will choose the finalists for the Flocktography photo challenge.  Finalists will be called out in a discussion thread on the Flocktography Flickr Group.  At that point we'll let you know how YOU can vote for the winners.

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Obviously the rules are a little loose for this first contest as we feel it out, but we fully hope to do this again...hopefully with more organization, more submissions, and bigger prizes!

Please spread the word about this contest to all your awesome photographer friends (who, of course, you've already turned into Flockstars) so we can have a really awesome set of submissions.

We can't wait to see what you all come up with!

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: flock, browser, photography, contest, challenge, homepage, flocktography, flickr

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While we're still hard at work pushing Flock 2 from beta towards release, we are taking a moment to provide you with Flock 1.2.5.

Flock puts you at the center of the action, with all your tools and services orbiting around you.  It's a lot of work to string all these things together, and occasionally things break.  This has been the case with Twitter and Facebook in recent days, as they have both changed elements of their back-end (Facebook with a new design, Twitter with their feeds).  You may have noticed issues posting your status to Facebook from the People Sidebar or getting recent friend updates from Twitter in the sidebar.  These have been fixed in Flock 1.2.5, which is available now from http://www.flock.com.

Enjoy, and please continue to provide the great and timely feedback that allows us to keep Flock in tip top shape!

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: flock, browser, 1.2.5, twitter, facebook, newfacebook, bugs, fixes

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Like most companies, we keep a close eye on what is driving traffic to our website.  The changes are fascinating to watch week to week...small blog posts end up sending solid chunks of traffic, large articles sometimes send surprisingly little, and occasionally very interesting items pop out at us.

About two months ago we started seeing major traffic from a new website: www.ThirtyDayChallenge2008.com.  We took a look at the site and discovered two interesting things:

1) They're recommending that everyone taking The Challenge use Flock as their primary browser.

2) They have a really cool thing going.

The Thirty Day Challenge is a program in which you spend thirty days learning about internet marketing and at the end, you will have made your first buck on the web.  It's a cool concept and is run in a great, no-strings-attached sort of way.  These guys make their money in internet marketing, and this project is about them giving back.  They've grown to be arguably the largest web-based learning program/community in just 4 years.  And they recommend Flock as their browser of choice because "Flock is the best web browser or internet browser that you can download... and is endlessly customizable."

So hats off to you, Thirty Day Challenge!  Thanks for the vote of confidence and good luck on your admirable mission.

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: flock, browser, thirtydaychallenge, 30DC, thirty day challenge, traffic, internet marketing

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Hey Flockstars,

Last week an issue cropped up with the Google Toolbar and Flock 1.x.  The short answer is: Google Toolbar is causing Flock 1.x to crash, so we've disabled it so you can continue to use Flock.

The long answer:  This is not a matter of Google toolbar or Flock being broken: the toolbar is reading Flock 1.x's user agent string as Firefox 3, and trying to do things Flock 1.x can't do, causing a crash.

We've reported this issue to Google, and hopefully they will get the toolbar updated so it realizes that Flock 1.x is based on Firefox 2.  You can help by submitting a report of this issue to Google at http://www.google.com/support/firefox/bin/request.py?contact_type=problem.

The toolbar should work just fine in the Flock 2 beta, which is based on Firefox 3.  This is a great opportunity for you to grab Flock 2.  Although though still in beta, the changes provided by Firefox 3 already make Flock 2.0 a vastly superior product.  Beta 2 has largely been found to be stable, so making the switch is more likely to improve your browsing experience than hurt it.  You can download it and find more information at http://www.flock.com/beta/download

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: googletoolbar, google, toolbar, extension, crash, disabled, Flock, browser

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Hi Folks,

As many of you Facebook users may know, Facebook is in the process of rolling out some pretty dramatic changes to their website.  They have been kind enough to make most of their changes available prior to
release for testing, but of course some things change along the way. Fortunately, to make your experience with transitioning to the new pages as seamless as possible, we've been able to make several updates to Flock before the new design is even generally available.

Nevertheless, we know of two issues with the new Facebook that we're still actively working to address.  The first is that you can't update your Facebook status through Flock's people sidebar when using the new Facebook.  Secondly, we're in the process of tweaking how Flock's drag-n-drop works with Facebook's overhaul of their Wall feature. 

We hope to have fixes rolled out in the next week or so.  Thanks in advance for your patience and keep on Flocking!

Mike

We’ve got a fun product to tell you about. Today, Flock launched its latest product that is geared towards people who are passionate about keeping up with Fashion, Entertainment and Lifestyle trends. Flock’s ‘Gloss Edition’ is the world’s first fashion and entertainment browser designed to help people keep up with the latest fashion trends and celebrity lifestyle scoop (o.k. gossip).

We’ve put together a bundle of the best sources on the Web to bring you your daily dose of fashion inspiration, celebrity dish, and trends by including over 35 leading content providers and partners, from Glam, PopSugar, InStyle, ThisNext, DesignerApparel, AllTop and others. The best part about it is that all of this information comes to you, and is updated immediately as news and images are published. You’ll never miss a beat and people will wonder how you stay on top of it all.

We’ve also worked with a great panel of women to design a theme for the Gloss Edition of Flock that is pink, ‘soft’, fun and well suited for the fashionistas’ never-ending pursuit of stylish individuality.

We had fun building the Gloss Edition and we hope you have fun with the experience that it delivers. Check it out, and please don’t keep it a secret. Tell your friends about Flock.com/gloss.

-Cheers

Dan Burkhart
Vice President, Marketing
Dan at flock dot com

What if you sat down in a restaurant and the waiter asked you “…would you like that Good, Great, or UN-BE-LIEVABLE?” Of course you might ask about price, but if all options were free, of course you’d choose “UN-BE-LIEVABLE”.

That’s why we’ve been working so hard on our Flock 2 Beta, and our audience of loyal Flockstars has been growing so quickly. Everybody loves the latest improvements Mozilla’s Firefox 3 technology: much improved performance, tighter security and improved usability. However, what if you could have all of those great features AND all of the award-winning innovations that Flock offers?  (That would be the integrated People, Media, WebMail, Photo Uploader, Blog Editor, Feed Reader, and more.) Today, we’re making our second beta of Flock 2 available for everyone to enjoy, and you can take your browsing experience from great…to UN-BE-LIEVABLE for free.

In this latest release of Flock 2 Beta (two) we’ve taken your feedback very much to heart and included over 175 bug fixes, and incorporated Mozilla’s latest security patch from their 3.0.1 release.  Flock 2 Beta (two) is fast, even more stable and polished.

Now lets get back to the UN-BE-LIEVABLE part.  Millions of people still keep their lives ‘organized’ on the Web by opening heaps of tabs.  Those uninitiated to Flock often say “I don’t need anything to manage my stuff; I keep them open in tabs.” We believe this is not terribly different than ‘organizing’ your life by stacking papers all over your desk. People around the world are falling in love with Flock’s ability to help them remain connected to the variety of sites, services, and content that interests them, without stacking tabs all over their desktop. Flock keeps your world organized and brings your most important and interesting items and events to you.

Go ahead: order up the “UN-BE-LIEVABLE” version of browsing that leaves tired old conventional browsing in the dust…or, trapped under heaps of tabs.

You can get Flock 2 Beta (two) from http://www.flock.com/beta/download, where you can also find several articles detailing the improvements we’ve made.

-Enjoy

Dan Burkhart
Vice President, Marketing
Dan at flock dot com

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Tags: flock, browser, flock 2, flock 2 beta 2, F2B2, mozilla, firefox 3, unbelievable, beta, beta 2

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I have a great job.

Every day, a large chunk of my day is spent reading feedback from Flockstars like you on Twitter, our forums, our blog, our feedback tool, across the blogsphere and beyond.  I do a lot of logging of feature requests, troubleshooting and explaining features, but I also get to read an amazing amount of wonderful, positive feedback.  I send the highlights out to the Flock staff, but I truly get to bask in all this great feedback.  It's really heartening to see that we are making the web browsing experience so much better for so many people.

This feedback is so awesome, in fact, that I can't keep holding it in.  I want to share this love, and give props to the folks who are telling the world how much they love Flock.  Welcome to the first edition of "You Can't Make This Stuff Up", an ongoing segment in which I'll be reposting the love that people are giving to Flock.

If you wish for us to remove something you said or credit you differently, please contact me at evan at flock dot com.  The opinions expressed on the blogs and Twitter accounts we link to are not those of me or Flock.  Unless they're cool.

Flock 1.2 love

"If you are using web 2.0 tools you NEED to use the Flock browser: Flock rules! Goodbye FireFox. I'll miss you!"
Posted on Twitter by Brad Trnavsky

“The best thing that’s ever happened to me.  For the Web 2.0 obsessed like me, this will make your life easier.”
Blog Post by Margot Stephenson

"Have been using Flock for 2 days now. The social integration is awesome! It is a step beyond Firefox as Firefox is beyond Internet Exploder."
Posted on Twitter by Bradley C Hughes

"It is the best browser I have ever used.  Better than Firefox by a thousand miles, better than Safari by 10,000 miles, and better than Internet Explorer and Netscape by a million miles."
Blog Post by Susan Vaughn

Love for Flock 2 Beta (one):

"I am abusing flock 2.0b1 (26 tabs currently open) and its holding up like a dream "
Posted on Twitter by Ryan Skadberg

Holy hotcakes, batman! Flock 2.0 is blazing!!"
Posted on Twitter by Amy Hussey

"Hello permanent use of Flock 2, bye bye FireFox and Safari. It's loooove for this social media junkie.."
Posted on Twitter by Leslie

"Flock 2 + Firefox 3 engine = best browser ever"
Posted on Twitter by Max Barkhatov

Thanks so much to everyone who broadcasts their love of Flock every day.  We appreciate it more than we can express, and I'm looking forward to publishing more of it in the next "You Can't Make This Stuff Up".

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: Flock, browser, love, Twitter, feedback, blogosphere, cyberdog

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The recent surge of interest for the Flock browser has given us a lot of energy to make sure that we???re making the Flock experience available for as many people as possible around the world. As with most of our feature decisions, we looked at serving the largest audiences of users first, and so it was an easy decision for us to focus on our largest non-English speaking market of Germany to deliver our first ???deeply localized??? build of Flock. The Social Web is exploding in Germany, and so it is natural that there are many fans of Flock interested in a more authentic, truly German experience. The Flock German edition is available here. 

What does this mean? Well, our custom German experience is more than just ???skin??? deep. The Flock DE edition ships with local content, media streams and service offerings from the most popular sites in Germany. (For example: sports content from sites like Sports1.de, and bundesliga.de rather than ESPN.com. News from Spiegel.de and FinancialTimes.de instead of CNN.com). Search services deliver German search results (for example, Yahoo.de, Amazon.de, eBay.de, Wikipedia.de, etc). Social sites like Facebook, Flickr and YouTube are defaulted to return the German experience.

We???re very proud of the German experience provided in the Flock DE version. We???re also looking forward to working with our dedicated volunteer localizers worldwide to continue rolling out similarly ???deep localizations??? for other countries going forward. We plan to upgrade the DE edition to Flock 2 (built on the same technology as Firefox 3) as soon as our Flock 2 beta cycles are completed.

If you are a German speaking Flockstar and enjoy the German Flock experience, please help us spread the word and let people know that there is a much better way to experience the Web, with Flock.

-Cheers/Prost

Dan Burkhart

Vice President, Marketing
dan at flock dot com

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Tags: flock, browser, Germany, Deutschland, DE, mozilla, localization

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Hello all,

With all of the attention around the imminent release of Mozilla’s Firefox 3 technology, we’ve been beaming with enthusiasm about what’s in store for Flock fans. Last night, we pushed our public beta (one) of Flock 2 live.  Flock 2 incorporates all of the latest features found in Flock’s recent public release, but it runs on the latest and greatest Firefox 3 technology from Mozilla. So now you don’t have to abandon your love affair with your new favorite browser to check out the latest performance, security and feature enhancements from Mozilla. We’ve got them all right here for you!

Flock 2 is FAST. Manages memory better, and is more secure, thanks to Mozilla’s Firefox 3 technology.

As with all beta software, you might experience some imperfections. We’ve all been running the Flock 2 beta internally for several months, gathering our notes and fixing these imperfections as they arise, but now we could really use your assistance to make Flock 2 the only choice for those that refuse to stand still, and refuse to accept a world in which their browser just browses for them.

The Flock 2 beta marks a very important watershed moment for us. And we have some amazing things planned for the remainder of the year, so please help us refine this product by running Flock 2 beta (one), and logging imperfections by using the ‘bug icon’ in the upper right of your browser.

We will make the full migration to a commercial release of Flock 2 as soon as possible, pending your feedback.

We’ve got fuel in our tanks, and we’re here to show the world how much they’ve been missing by using plain browsers. Get on board, and help us out by sending your comments, love, enthusiasm, and of course…by telling your friends about Flock!

Our mission is all about you!

-Dan Burkhart

VP of Marketing
dan at flock dot com

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Tags: flock2, flock, browser, firefox3, firefox 3, mozilla, beta

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The beta period for Flock’s 1.2 browser is now officially over. Although we continually juggle inbound requests for new service integrations, we couldn’t be happier about this latest release with Digg and Pownce built in. Two weeks ago, we released the Flock 1.2 beta and have since been inundated with heaps of great encouraging comments from our users. Although we’re generally not driven by an interest in feeding the vices of our users, the words ‘addicting’ and ‘addictive’ have been used more than ever in the way that we’ve seen our browser described since we integrated Digg and Pownce into the experience.

"Really like the Digg button. Far too addictive! You have a magnificent product."

Go nuts! We love it too! Now that we’ve really got things cooking for you, we’re ready to offer a peek into our next round of progress. Within the coming weeks Flock will release it’s first beta of Flock 2.0, which incorporates the Mozilla technology that powers Firefox 3. So get ready to have all of the latest performance (memory management), security and feature enhancements found in the latest Firefox 3 release along with the unique user experience innovations only delivered by the Flock browser.

If you’re finding yourselves addicted now, then we’ll be anxious to hear from you when you have the features you love, running on the latest Mozilla technology we’re all raving about.
As always, if you’ve become a convert to the Flock browser, please tell a friend to check us out and…Digg us!

-Cheers

Dan Burkhart
Vice President, Marketing
dan at flock dot com

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Tags: Flock, Browser, Digg, Pownce, Firefox3, "Firefox 3, "Flock 2.0 beta

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We recently became aware that Flock was selected as one of PC World's top 100 products of 2008. This is flattering for us, and another great validation that our vision is resonating with the world. We were not only in the company of many wonderful other products and services, but we were listed as #6 on the list of 100 services.

Rather than doing some kind of chicken dance to show our jubilation for this acknowledgement, I'll simply point you to the list so that you can check out the many wonderful companies which also received this recognition.  Of course, we pay close attention to the other browsers, and we are extremely humbled to be listed as the top browser by PC World.

The pace of progress here at Flock has been steady. In November of 2007, Flock launched our first commercial release with the 1.0 version of our browser. Today, we find ourselves almost half way into 2008, and we're launching our third full commercial release with the 1.2 version of our browser.

We've got some great things planned for the remainder of 2008, and look forward to continued innovation in pursuit of delighting Flock fans worldwide.

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Tags: flock, browser, award, PCWorld, FireFox3, "Firefox 3, mozilla, best, 2008

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As I'm sure you've noticed, the developers here at Flock are not ones to stand still very long. We're proud to announce that today, Flock's 1.2 public beta release is available on our site. With this latest release, Flock has integrated Digg, Pownce and AOL Mail into the browser, making it easier than ever for Flock users to stay connected with their friends and favorite services on the Web.

Let me start with Digg. What's not to love about Digg? They pioneered the whole category of social news and have done an incredible job of making news entertaining and engaging for everyone. Fortunately for all of us, the folks at Digg have made news consumption cool for an entire generation of people. We like what they've done so much that we made sure you can take Digg with you wherever you are on the Web by using Flock. Flock's People sidebar plugs right into Digg so that you can always check out the stories that your friends have Dugg and easily share with them from anywhere on the web. You can also post your discoveries to Digg easily by using your sidebar or the Diggman icon next to the address bar in Flock. We're all really excited about the Digg integration and look forward to hearing your comments.

But that's not all! We've also integrated Pownce into this beta release. Pownce is a service that "allows you to send stuff to your friends," such as music, photos, videos, messages and links. Pownce is another highly useful service which appears as a 'People' service in Flock. Pownce and Flock fit very nicely together, because we share the belief that connecting and sharing with your friends keeps things much more interesting. We're very happy about the addition of Pownce and hope that you enjoy their service as much as we do.

Rounding out this release, we've also added AOL Mail to Flock's existing webmail options.

We couldn't be happier about the continuing evolution of newly added services into the Flock experience and honestly couldn't have asked for a nicer group of folks to work with across the board.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this latest beta release. Please send us your thoughts and comments to our feedback page.

Cheers and Enjoy!

-Dan Burkhart

VP of Marketing

dan at flock dot com

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Tags: browser, flock, digg, pownce, aol, beta, download, "flock 1.2, email, "Nice People

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Hi Flockers! This is my first time posting to the Flock blog, but I've been with the company since September 2006, working out of the Victoria, BC office (informally known as Flock North).

Not two weeks after taking the Webby award for Social Networking, last night Flock was honoured to receive two awards at the annual VIATeC Technology Awards dinner. VIATeC is the high-tech industry association serving Victoria (and the rest of Vancouver Island), where much of the Flock development team is based. Vancouver Island is quickly becoming a hotbed for innovative tech companies, and the Flock Canada team is very excited to be part of that growth.

Online Strategy of the Year - This award recognizes Flock's success in integrating and forging relationships with the major players in the social networking and social media spaces.

Newsmaker of the Year - It has been a very good year for Flock in the press. So much so, in fact, that there were no other finalists listed for this category. With over 400 published articles including PC World, BBC, and many other major media outlets, Flock was far and away the biggest newsmaker.

We were also finalists for two other awards: Executive of the Year (Clayton Stark) and Innovative Excellence: Software or Electronic Service Delivery.

Thanks to the judges for these honours, congratulations to all the other finalists, and thanks especially to VIATeC and its members for helping to develop such a vibrant and exciting technology community here on "Silicon Isle".  :)

Chris Campbell

Director, Product Architecture

chris dot c at flock dot com

Hi Folks,

As some of you might have noticed, the Facebook People sidebar is not populating with your friends at the moment. We are aware of the problem and are working on a fix to accommodate the Facebook changes.

We anticipate having a fix pushed out very shortly. Flock will update itself with the fix and you will simply need to restart your browser.

Thanks for your patience.

The Flock Team

Wow. We honestly didn't prepare a speech for this event...

A few weeks back, Flock was humbled to have been nominated amongst such esteemed heavyweights as Facebook, Bebo, Ning and ChangeEverything.ca for the annual Webby Awards in the Social Networking category. Late last night, we were alerted that Flock won the Webby Award for this incredibly competitive category. For a 40 person company, filled with passionate individuals who have been working late nights and straight through weekends, this is a very pleasant, unexpected, and flattering surprise!

This year marked the 12th annual Webby Awards ceremony. They received over 10,000 nominations from 60+ countries worldwide. The Webby's have long been recognized as a very special acknowledgement of the companies that are leading in key areas of excellence and innovation. Past Webby Award winners have included: Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo!, iTunes, Google, NPR, Salon Magazine, Evite, Meetup, Wikipedia, Flickr, PBS, and The Onion.

We are delighted about receiving this prestigious award, and would also like to congratulate Facebook for winning the People's Voice award within the same category. We're very close with the good folks over at Facebook and always appreciate what good partners they have been to Flock.

As always, we continue to be grateful to the millions of users around the world who have downloaded Flock, and to those that continue to champion Flock as a fun, fresh and innovative alternative to conventional browsers.

Thanks to the Judges of the Webby Awards, as well as our own Community of Flockstars for making the first third of 2008 a wild success.

-Cheers!

Dan Burkhart

Vice President, Marketing

dan at flock dot com

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Tags: flock, webby, award, winner, browser, webbyawards, 2008, mozilla, "social networking"

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Hey Flockstars,

First of all, a big thanks to all those who showed up to the Flockstar meetup in San Francisco last night. It was a small group, but we had a blast being able to talk to you face-to-face, show you 1.2, and talk about non-tech stuff.  We hope you had a good time too, and we'll definitely do another meetup soon!

I've been at the Web 2.0 Expo on and off all week.  We ran into a lot of Flockstars, including at the booths; IBM was apparently sporting Flock in their demos, and Coghead had a very passionate (and now stickered-up) Flock evangelist demoing their product with Flock.  I saw people rocking Flock on a number of laptops in the sessions, and got a lot of thumbs up for my Flockstar shirt.  We know you're out there, but it's just great to see the actual faces of people who use our product.

I think by far one of the most interested and pertinent sessions was one hosted by Jonah Peretti (of Buzzfeed) called "Influence is Overrated".  Jonah himself is a great study in how someone who would not be considered an "influencer" or an expert could end up on Good Morning America and in People talking about sweatshops and relationships.  Jonah started several projects for fun because he found them entertaining (such as ordering custom Nike shoes with the word "Sweatshop" on them) that spread and spread until they organically found their way to the press.

The point here is not that Jonah is a brilliant tactician or a key influencer; it's that he created something that was compelling to REAL people.  They sent these amusing sites off to their other friends who sent it to others who sent it to still more, until it became big enough that Katie Couric discovered it.  He was not a key influencer, but he influenced people because he had a compelling product that spread like wildfire.

I love this concept, because we've never made Flock for the critics.  We originally started building Flock because we wanted a tool to make our online lives easier.  We knew that you needed and wanted it too, but just didn't know quite what "it" was.  This is also why Flock was built as a full browser: instead of having to assemble your online experience, we do our best to build and integrate it for you (while still providing many customization and extension abilities).  We have grown and spread significantly in the last few years, and it's not because of key influencers writing about us.  It's because of YOU writing to your friends about Flock, YOU proudly sporting your "Blogged with Flock" tags, YOU putting Flockstar stickers on your laptops and shirts on your bodies, and YOU telling people that they HAVE to try Flock.  You have more influence than anyone labeled an "influencer" will ever have, because you are real and passionate and your own community listens to you.

Thank you for lending your influence to Flock.  I hope you will continue to evangelize Flock whenever you get a chance.  We'll keep innovating and improving it for you.

See you at the next meetup...shoot me some ideas about when and where we should hold one!

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: flock, browser, web2exposf, meetup, flockstar, influencers, jonahperetti, community, evangelists, influence

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Since the launch of Flock’s v1 product, we’ve taken great pride in receiving positive notes from our community about how Flock has “changed the way that [they] experience the Web”. Flock provides the technology, and people bring their widely varied interests and add their friends to the mix to create an experience that is entirely tailored to suit their needs.

We’ve recently embarked on an exciting project to create some new “editions” of Flock, which will appeal to people that share strong passions for particular causes and topics. We are launching our maiden “edition” today: the “Eco-Edition” of the Flock browser, which delivers the best environmentally conscious “green” content and media available from around the web in a tightly organized format, all available from a single download. Once the browser installs, it updates with fresh eco-content daily in the form of news feeds, media streams, and favorite sites, delivering an experience that is dynamic, connected and always fresh.  We’ve included an extensive offering of content topics, and fully expect people to prune and further refine the experience to better serve their own preferences once they’ve gotten acquainted with Flock.

Flock provides a unique platform for browser-based content programming -- users bring their passion for topics of interest. With the “Eco-Edition”, environmental information ranges from “alternative energy” to “climate news” to “green design + architecture” to “green cuisine”. Creating awareness is the best way to effect change, and we’re glad to help by donating 10% of proceeds from the Eco-Edition to an environmental charity, as determined by all the users of the Eco-Edition at the end of 2008.

We’re hitting record growth numbers for new downloads and users every week, and have been thrilled by the many vocal advocates of Flock. We are targeting Flock’s next product release, v1.2, for launch in May and have some exciting new services integrated which we know you’re going to enjoy, because your requests guide our feature prioritization.

We will also release new editions for other passionate audiences over the months to come. We hope these editions will introduce Flock’s unique capabilities to new audiences that will be delighted by what they discover in Flock and join the global community of raving Flock fans.

We’re excited to see what happens when we mix Flock, People and Passion together. And we’re thrilled to kick off this new program with the “Eco-Edition”.

As always, we are very much looking forward to your input and feedback.

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Tags: Flock, browser, green, eco-edition, sustainability, environmentalism, feeds, charity

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Hey Flockstars,

Some of us from Flock HQ will be ducking our heads into Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco next week.  How many people would be interested in grabbing drinks and food with some members of the Flock team?  We can talk about what's coming up, what you're hoping for in Flock, what you love, and how we can continue to spread this awesome community.  It'll be casual and fun, and we'll bring some Flock swag for you.

We'd love to meet up with you, so drop a comment here or email me directly if you'll be in the Bay Area next week and interested in a meetup!

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: flock, browser, web2.0, web2.0expo, expo, meetup

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Hey Flockstars,

As we noted in March, Flock's community is growing.  I have been lucky enough to work with and be part of an amazing, passionate, vocal community so far, and all signs point to this community of Flockstars growing in coolness as well as size.

As you have seen me say time and time again, your feedback is very important to us.  We are building this browser for YOU, and making the collective you happy is our primary goal.  This manifests in many ways: integrating services that you clamor for (like Picasa), working with you to quickly and efficiently crush bugs, bridging the gap and meeting you where you hang out (www.twitter.com/flocker), etc.

Your awesome feedback pours into us through the forums, our feedback tool and social networks.  Several members of the team, including our executives, read this feedback daily and respond to as many as possible.  I personally have spent many a late night responding to your feature requests and comments.  Frequently, the love you have sent in gets emailed out to the staff.

However, we are growing and have been unable to keep up with the flood of your feedback. Another company might find a way to cut down on your feedback.  They might make it harder to find these tools (like my bank does!), give you preformatted responses saying "thanks for your interest", or simply not respond. Flock is not one of those companies.

And so, I am thrilled to introduce our newest team member.  Jen Anderberg started at Flock last week as our Community Support Lead. In the coming weeks she will take over more and more of the "support" side of your feedback, while I continue to concentrate on your feature requests, your general happiness with Flock, and helping you get the word out about the social browser.

Jen resides at Flock North, our Canadian office, and will also be assisting that team wherever they need it.  She is an English major and a smart cookie, and will undoubtably be filling many different roles, like we all do here at Flock.

Please give Jen a warm welcome and do please continue to send your feedback to www.flock.com/feedback, our forums, here on our blog or directly to me or Jen. We're very excited about being able to respond to you even quicker!

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: Flock, browser, community, support, JenAnderberg, community support lead, feedback

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Hey Flockstars,

I was sitting in the weekly Flock Staff Meeting today, and I couldn't help but mention to the team: "our community is awesome!"

I feel this way all the time, but the reason I had to specifically call it out this week is because you all have been incredibly supportive and helpful during the short sidebar outage (two Flockstars even provided their Facebook login info to help us track it down).

Minutes later, while trying to digest some intense staff meeting pasta, I ran across the awesometacular Gary Vaynerchuck's video about "Good People Day 08".  He is always an inspiring guy, but he is positively bursting about GPD08, for good reason: there are few better feelings than recognizing and thanking good people in your life.

With that in mind, Flock would like to officially hand our Good People Day '08 thumbs up to you, our fantastic community.

There is a reason we affectionately refer to those who use Flock as Flockstars.  You folks rock.  You are our stars.  Because of you, we are able to continue having a blast making this product we LOVE.  Because of your constant feedback, we are able to make Flock better and better in a way we never could entirely through internal brainstorming.

Most importantly, because of your outspoken love for Flock, your ecstatic word-of-mouth, your blog posts, your Twittering, your VOICE, we are still here building an amazing browser that we care about just as much as you do.

Thank you.

Keep on spreading the word and we'll keep making this thing for you.

Now it's your turn...head out into the world and thank the good people in your lives.

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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Tags: GPD08, Gary Vaynerchuck, Flock, browser, Flockstar, Flockstars, Good People Day 08

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It wasn’t that long ago when people were buzzing about the (then) whiz kid, Marc Andreessen, and his amazing Mosaic browser, which later resulted in the explosive growth and meteoric rise  of the Netscape browser. Netscape not only brought the Internet to the masses, but it played a role in changing the world. It goes without saying that the innovation was too important to go unnoticed.

That same spirit of innovation that brought the original Netscape browser to 90% of our desktops, and ultimately the open-source Mozilla Project.  This started the populist movement inspiring developers from around the world to contribute code for the collective call-to-action of out-innovating it’s formidable competitor. Somewhere between the punk-rock appeal of the Boston Tea Party, and the socialist ideal of thousands of developers connected by a desire to work together to build a superior product, the Open Source movement flourished better than ever before. With AOL’s support, the Mozilla Project became the Mozilla Foundation, and Firefox became the rallying cry for users seeking a more secure, better performing, innovative browser built by the people, for the people.

Our charter here at Flock has been made possible in part by coupling the same innovative spirit that pioneering Netscape developers used to bring browsing to the masses, with the foundation of shared technology that Mozilla’s Open Source charter generously makes available to us. We have been invigorated by the daily emails and positive comments we receive from our users, and feel confident that Flock is playing an important role of keeping the spirit of innovative browser evolution alive and well.

With the decision to cease ongoing support of the Netscape browser, we are honored to have the support and endorsement of AOL and Netscape, who have introduced Flock to millions of loyal Netscape users as AOL sunsets ongoing support for the Netscape products in the field. Tom Drapeau  from Netscape has been instrumental in helping increase awareness of the Flock browser, and by doing so has introduced a global audience of people to the unique experience that only the Flock browser delivers.

Flock is designed to support and enhance the way that we use the web today. We appreciate Tom’s assistance in helping get the word out, and encourage you to be a champion of innovation by telling your friends about your experience with Flock as well. If you like the idea of people working late nights to deliver a free product to you, so that you can get more enjoyment out of your daily web experience, please lend a hand.

Netscape ruled, and now Flock rocks! We’re committed to keeping the Netscape’s original spirit of innovation alive and well.

-Many Thanks

Dan Burkhart

VP of Marketing
dan at flock dot com

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Tags: browser, Netscape, "Tom Drapeau, Mozilla, Firefox, Flock

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Hello Folks,

We’ve become aware that some Flock users have recently been experiencing issues with their Facebook People sidebar not logging in. Even though everyone can still log into Facebook, the much loved People sidebar is not logging in as it should.

We continue to make good progress on this matter. For the broad majority of users, downloading the latest version of Flock from our homepage will provide the fix you are looking for.If you download the latest version of Flock and you are still experiencing problems with your Facebook People sidebar, we’d like to hear from you at flock-feedback2 at flock dot com.

We will be pushing out an automatic upgrade to the latest version of Flock (version 1.1.1) shortly to make sure that all those affected with this authentication problem have their lives returned to normal Flock goodness.

-Thanks for hanging in there with us

Dan Burkhart
VP of Marketing
dan at flock dot com

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Tags: Flock, browser, sidebar, facebook, log-in, fix, authentication

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We've seen reports that some folks are logging into Facebook as usual, but the People sidebar in Flock isn't opening.  It's as if the login to the page is working, but the additional features in Flock aren't available (specifically the People sidebar isn't recognizing the login). That's exactly what's happening: for reasons we don't yet fully understand, the Facebook API is not allowing authentication in these cases.

These symptoms don't seem to be very wide-spread, but until we've determined and fixed the API issue you might see this behavior.  If you do, here's how to work around it.  With the help of some Flockstars out there we've gotten a hold of Facebook accounts that exhibit this problem, and we've discovered the following work-around: in all cases we have found that clicking the 'Accounts' or the 'Privacy' link on facebook.com will "kick-start" the API authentication, and the People bar will start working again.

If you are logging into Facebook and not seeing the People sidebar as usual, please click on Privacy or Accounts on the facebook.com page. This should make API come to life and allow the authentication you need for your people to flow into the sidebar.  If clicking either Accounts or Privacy on the facebook.com page doesn't return things to normal, please let us know (feedback at flock dot com).

We will work with the fine folks over at facebook.com to get a permanent solution to this in the coming days.  In the meantime, please follow the instructions above, and accept our apologies for this temporary inconvenience.

Thank you

-Dan Burkhart

VP of Marketing

dan at flock dot com

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Tags: flock, facebook, fix, sidebar, login

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