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

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 an official 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

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

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.

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

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,

Second Update: Just as were deploying the Automatic Update tonight, Facebook changed their site again. Fortunately we were able to handle this change with a simple Web Detective fix that has already been deployed. If you're running Flock 1.1.4 and are still experiencing issues with Facebook sidebar issue, please follow the following instructions

Update: If you've got to Facebook and can't wait for the automatic update, Flock 1.1.4 is available for download at http://www.flock.com. All of your previous configuration information will still be available to you after installing 1.1.4. We're still targeting for later this evening to have the automatic update available.

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 Webbys 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

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

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.