Developer(s) | Flock, Inc. |
---|---|
Initial release | April 11, 2005[1] |
Final release | |
Preview release | none (n/a) [±] |
Operating system | Windows, OS X, Linux [2] |
Available in | Catalan, Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), English (US, Australian, British, Canadian), Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal + African Portuguese Speaking Countries and Brazil), Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Latin American and Spain) |
Type |
Web browser Feed reader |
License | Freeware [3] |
Website | Official website archives |
Flock is a discontinued web browser that specialized in providing social networking and Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface. [4] Earlier versions of Flock used the Gecko HTML rendering engine by Mozilla. Version 2.6.2, released on January 27, 2011, was the last version based on Mozilla Firefox. [5] [6] Starting with version 3, Flock was based on Chromium and so used the WebKit rendering engine. [7] [8] Flock was available as a free download, and supported Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and, at one time, Linux as well.
Support for Flock was discontinued in April 2011. [9] [10]
Flock was the successor to Round Two, who raised money from Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures, Shasta Ventures and other angel investors. Bart Decrem and Geoffrey Arone co-founded the company. [11] Flock raised $15 million in a fourth round of funding led by Fidelity Ventures on May 22, 2008, for an estimated total of $30 million, according to CNET. The company's previous investors, Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures, and Shasta Ventures, also participated in the round. [12]
In January 2011, Flock Inc. was acquired by Zynga. [13] The browser has been discontinued, with support ending April 26, 2011. [14]
Flock 2.5 integrated social networking and media services including MySpace, [15] Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc. [16] When logging into any of the supported social services, Flock could track updates from friends: profiles, uploaded photos, and more. Flock 2.5 added Twitter Search functionality, multi-casting of status updates to multiple services, and the introduction of instant messaging via Facebook Chat in the browser.
Other features include:
In December 2007, Flock won the Mashable Open Web Awards for Applications and Widgets [26] and in March 2008, Flock won the South By Southwest [27] Web Award for Community. [28]
CNET gave the Mac OS X version of Flock 1.0 the title of "Best Mac Software of 2007". [29] PC World's Harry McCracken reviewed Flock as his "New Favorite Web Browser". [30]
In February 2008, AOL announced that it would discontinue support for the Netscape browser, and recommended Flock and Firefox as alternative browsers to its userbase of Netscape 9 users. [31] For the Netscape 8 userbase, AOL recommended only the Flock browser to its users. [32] In March 2008, Flock announced that they had seen "nearly 3 million downloads" and a 135% increase in active users in the first two months of 2008. They also announced "more than 70 percent of Flock users making it their default browser of choice". [33]
In May 2008, Flock won the Social Networking category of the Webby Awards. [34] [35] Flock was nominated for this award along with Facebook, Bebo and Ning.
When Flock's discontinuation was announced in April 2011, reviewer Joey Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! offered the analysis: "Whether this was down to poor implementation design wise (one needs only glance at ' Rockmelt' for an example of a social browser done right) or just general apathy towards having alerts from twitter, flickr, facebook, digg et al. in your face all of the time is moot: Flock has flocked off and for all its innovation it never quite lived up to its own hype." [9]
Upon exiting beta, Flock won a number of awards: [23]
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
Developer(s) | Flock, Inc. |
---|---|
Initial release | April 11, 2005[1] |
Final release | |
Preview release | none (n/a) [±] |
Operating system | Windows, OS X, Linux [2] |
Available in | Catalan, Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), English (US, Australian, British, Canadian), Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal + African Portuguese Speaking Countries and Brazil), Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Latin American and Spain) |
Type |
Web browser Feed reader |
License | Freeware [3] |
Website | Official website archives |
Flock is a discontinued web browser that specialized in providing social networking and Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface. [4] Earlier versions of Flock used the Gecko HTML rendering engine by Mozilla. Version 2.6.2, released on January 27, 2011, was the last version based on Mozilla Firefox. [5] [6] Starting with version 3, Flock was based on Chromium and so used the WebKit rendering engine. [7] [8] Flock was available as a free download, and supported Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and, at one time, Linux as well.
Support for Flock was discontinued in April 2011. [9] [10]
Flock was the successor to Round Two, who raised money from Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures, Shasta Ventures and other angel investors. Bart Decrem and Geoffrey Arone co-founded the company. [11] Flock raised $15 million in a fourth round of funding led by Fidelity Ventures on May 22, 2008, for an estimated total of $30 million, according to CNET. The company's previous investors, Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures, and Shasta Ventures, also participated in the round. [12]
In January 2011, Flock Inc. was acquired by Zynga. [13] The browser has been discontinued, with support ending April 26, 2011. [14]
Flock 2.5 integrated social networking and media services including MySpace, [15] Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc. [16] When logging into any of the supported social services, Flock could track updates from friends: profiles, uploaded photos, and more. Flock 2.5 added Twitter Search functionality, multi-casting of status updates to multiple services, and the introduction of instant messaging via Facebook Chat in the browser.
Other features include:
In December 2007, Flock won the Mashable Open Web Awards for Applications and Widgets [26] and in March 2008, Flock won the South By Southwest [27] Web Award for Community. [28]
CNET gave the Mac OS X version of Flock 1.0 the title of "Best Mac Software of 2007". [29] PC World's Harry McCracken reviewed Flock as his "New Favorite Web Browser". [30]
In February 2008, AOL announced that it would discontinue support for the Netscape browser, and recommended Flock and Firefox as alternative browsers to its userbase of Netscape 9 users. [31] For the Netscape 8 userbase, AOL recommended only the Flock browser to its users. [32] In March 2008, Flock announced that they had seen "nearly 3 million downloads" and a 135% increase in active users in the first two months of 2008. They also announced "more than 70 percent of Flock users making it their default browser of choice". [33]
In May 2008, Flock won the Social Networking category of the Webby Awards. [34] [35] Flock was nominated for this award along with Facebook, Bebo and Ning.
When Flock's discontinuation was announced in April 2011, reviewer Joey Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! offered the analysis: "Whether this was down to poor implementation design wise (one needs only glance at ' Rockmelt' for an example of a social browser done right) or just general apathy towards having alerts from twitter, flickr, facebook, digg et al. in your face all of the time is moot: Flock has flocked off and for all its innovation it never quite lived up to its own hype." [9]
Upon exiting beta, Flock won a number of awards: [23]
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)