Posted March 4, 2010 - 6:56pm by Shawn Hardin
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For those of us who believe in the importance of freedom of choice, this week is very special. In the past, European PC users were only given Microsoft’s choice of browsers — Internet Explorer. But now, thanks to the European Commission, users can choose their browser from twelve of the top browsers available in Europe. As part of Microsoft’s anti-trust settlement with the Commission, these twelve browsers will be presented to users of the Microsoft Windows operating system. This presentation, referred to as the Browser Choice Screen, was launched this week and will be delivered to 192 Million PCs within 27 European countries over the next 90 days. Flock is thrilled to have been selected as one of the top twelve browsers. The fact that millions of users can now choose a browser that fits their needs is the good news. Unfortunately, there’s some bad news too. A representative mock-up of the actual window that is now being delivered to PC users in Europe by Microsoft is available for you to see at http://www.browserchoice.eu. Unfortunately, this Choice Screen design leaves most users unaware that there are more than five of the largest browsers to choose from. So it doesn’t achieve the European Commission’s stated objective to provide "information on the 12 most widely-used web browsers and to allow users to easily download and install one or more of these web browsers". Flock has joined forces with five other browser companies to present an urgent petition to the European Commission so that a simple fix can make all the browser choices readily apparent. Last night, we formally submitted our Petition to the European Commission. As you can see in the petition, what we’re fighting for on behalf of users is very straightforward. We want them to know about the wide range of choices they have when they select a browser. Whether they need a social browser, such as Flock or any of the other eleven options. We can all agree that everyone deserves the opportunity to make the most informed choice possible. The European Commission quickly acknowledged our submission, and we are hopeful that we can engage in a dialogue about a simple, quick fix that would help consumers make an informed choice. Browser choice is important because it encourages innovation. And fixing the current Choice Screen design means Internet users in Europe will have an effective and unbiased ability to select the browser that best meets their needs based on the merits of all 12 browsers, and not only the "Big 5" on the main screen. |
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Posted February 17, 2010 - 4:45pm by Dan Burkhart
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2010 is off with a bang for Flock. Interest in the Flock social browsing experience continues to grow at an impressive rate worldwide. We continue to break new records on a weekly basis – in fact this week Flock surpassed 4.2 Million users on Facebook, which is up from 3 Million in early December. Flock’s recent acceleration in growth has come primarily by way of active recommendations from our most enthusiastic fans – telling their friends about us via Facebook and Twitter. For this, we are extremely grateful. We have been fortunate to have a dedicated Community Ambassador, Evan Hamilton, who has been a die-hard champion of Flock for over three years here at the company. He has been our most vocal and visible advocate on all of the forums: answering questions, offering hi-fives when appropriate, and generally exuding his own form of ‘awesomeness’ by bringing superb enthusiasm and dedication to our offices on a daily basis. Today, Evan is moving on to pursue his next chapter, and we will certainly miss his him around here. I would personally like to thank Evan for his positive attitude, public leadership and deep passion for the Flock mission throughout his time here. He is definitely someone who believes deeply that we all deserve to experience the web with a browser that better serves our collective needs. Your raves, questions, comments and concerns will continue to be served by our dedicated staff, through @Flocker on Twitter, and through our support forums on GetSatisfaction. As always, your feedback is invaluable to us, so please keep it coming. We look forward to hearing from you. -Dan Burkhart Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: 2010growthevan |
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Posted January 5, 2010 - 2:04pm by Evan Hamilton
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Hey Flockstars, I am very happy to inform you that Flock 2.5.6 is now available from our homepage. 2.5.6 addresses the Flickr logout issues and Twitter sidebar issues that some people have been experiencing. 2.5.6 also includes a Firefox security update and various other fixes, all of which you can read about in the release notes. Please note that 2.5.6 auto-updates are not turned on at this time. The best way to upgrade is to follow these steps:
Congrats, you've been updated to the last version of Flock! Some of you may be wondering about the status of the Facebook Chat/Notifications feature in the bottom right of the browser. We would have loved to fix the issues with this feature in 2.5.6. However, Facebook continues to rapidly change the code powering these features, and does not provide an API for connecting to them (like they do with other features). We’re hoping to reach a resolution for this popular feature that will be less sensitive to Facebook code changes going forward. Thanks for your terrific support and patience, and please continue to provide your feedback via GetSatisfaction, Twitter, Facebook and beyond - it is invaluable towards making this product better. Flock'n'roll, Evan Hamilton Blogged with the Flock Browser
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Posted December 16, 2009 - 6:47pm by Dan Burkhart
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Today, the European Commission arrived at an important settlement with Microsoft regarding the manner in which Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser is presented as a default browsing option to consumers who are using Windows-based PC’s. The Commission has recognized not only that web browsers are extremely important in defining the overall experience for web users, but that this is also critical place to take action in order to promote choice and innovation on behalf of consumers so that open standards and innovation can flourish everywhere on the web. Microsoft and the European Commission have agreed on Microsoft’s proposal to present a “Browser Choice Screen” to users with a choice of 12 browsers, based on popularity as determined by market share within the European Union. Flock was included as one of the 12 browsers, and this means that 100 Million Windows users will receive a window notifying them of their choice in innovative offerings other than Internet Explorer. This is a big win for consumers. Most people have surely made their choice in browsers without understanding the full range of offerings available. Above all, the Social Web continues to grow throughout the world, (Facebook added 250 Million users this year, topping 350MM, and Twitter continues to ignite passionate people from every corner of the globe) Flock’s specific focus on delivering a browser that is designed to better serve the needs of people who are not just consumers, but also active participants in social behaviors on the web; from publishing blogs, to updating profiles, to tweeting, to discovering media and staying better informed from all their own sources of interest…all from within the comfort of their own browser. Flock is delighted about the spirit of the Choice Screen, and very excited to be selected as one of the browsers that will be presented to the broader European community. We are hopeful that many more people around the world will agree that the web has evolved far beyond the capabilities of conventional web browsers, and that Flock is the best solution for people who want to stay up to date with a variety of people, content and media as every day evolves quickly. Official European Commission link here: -Cheers Dan Burkhart Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Flock Dan ‘at’ flock dot com Blogged with the Flock Browser
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Posted December 8, 2009 - 3:03pm by Dan Burkhart
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This is a fun follow-up post to our note we published on October 4th, when we had just recently crossed 2 Million total users on Facebook. Well, in just two and a half months, we’ve added another Million users of Flock on Facebook. In the chart below you can see that we’ve been on a nice trajectory this year, and in particular we’ve seen exceptional growth occurring around the globe from those countries where Facebook and Twitter have also been growing at record pace. These are the kind of charts we all like to see, but our challenge is to keep it going. That’s where you come in. 
If you're one of the many enjoying your Flock experience, please take advantage of our Flock Referral program by inviting your friends via Facebook to help them discover that Flock is the best browser for social web users. We’re delighted with this recent growth and validation from millions of people. We’re also looking forward to 2010 with a great deal of hope and anticipation because we’ve been working on a new Flock experience that we believe is going to blow you away. We’ll start sharing more about the next version of Flock in the New Year. For those that are interested in receiving an early peek at the beta, please submit your email to our list below so that we can send you your invite as it becomes available. (We don’t sell or share your contact information with anyone. We’re on the same team.) Dan Burkhart Blogged with the Flock Browser Tags: flock browser growth facebook 3 million users milestone beta |
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Posted October 27, 2009 - 3:33am by Shawn Hardin
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There is no question that the social web has quickly become a global phenomenon, spanning all languages, cultures and geographies. Of the 22 Million Hispanics who are online today, 40% frequently spend time on social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. With the Univision Edition of Flock, this vibrant and fast-growing community can now remain connected to their friends, their favorite social networks, and stay up to date with the best Spanish content available from Univision. Here at Flock, we’re thrilled to have partnered with the enthusiastic team at Univision, and couldn’t be happier about the excitement with which they’ve proudly introduced Flock to their loyal audience of users. We’d also like to extend a very warm welcome to the Hispanic community online, and hope that the Univision Edition of Flock makes your web experience much more personal and gratifying than it has been with conventional browsers. If you’re interested in seeing Flock explained in Spanish check out this video: If you speak Spanish, please give it a try by downloading it at flock.univision.com. We look forward to hearing your impressions. Cheers, -Shawn Blogged with the Flock Browser
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Flock has been distributed in 18 different languages, spanning the globe, but until today we have not offered a Pan-Latin Spanish version. As we had |
Posted October 14, 2009 - 2:22pm by Shawn Hardin
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I am excited to announce that Flock will now be promoted and distributed by two major online partners to open up the world of Flock to more users around the globe.
We have a second major media partner we’ll be making a public announcement about within the next three weeks. It is another market leader serving millions of users within the U.S. and across several large international markets. We’re delighted to be partnered with these two leading web portals to deliver a unique web experience to their respective audiences through the lens of the Flock social web browser. To date, the Flock audience has grown almost entirely by word of mouth -- thanks to our enthusiastic and supportive users -- we couldn’t be happier to work with these incredible partners and open up the world of Flock to an even broader global audience. Witamy naszych nowych przyjaciół z Polski! (Welcome to our new friends in Poland!) -Shawn Hardin Blogged with the Flock Browser
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The first partnership, which is launching today, is in Europe with Onet.pl, the leading portal in Poland with a monthly reach of over 12.4 Million Polish users. Onet.pl is a media powerhouse with a network of over 1.5 MM active blogs, serving a European audience well beyond Poland. The Onet Edition of Flock will be made available at |
Posted October 4, 2009 - 9:31am by Dan Burkhart
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It’s been a tremendous year for Flock so far. We just hit a really nice milestone that we’d like to share with everyone. Flock just exceeded 2 million total users on Facebook. Of total Flock users, those who are active on Facebook have grown 280% in the first three quarters of 2009. We are honored to have this many people from around the world electing to make the switch to experience the social web with Flock as their browser of choice. We appreciate Facebook, and all of its loyal fans worldwide for helping spread the word about Flock. Flock is an independent effort, and as such we are even more critically dependent on our fans to spread the word about the Flock browser. We are humbled and honored by this vote of confidence and look forward to evolving the Flock product to continually improve the web experience for our fans. We have listened and learned from you – our invaluable community of users. And our team is busy building and is incredibly excited about delivering an even greater experience for our users in our next version of Flock 3.0, which is scheduled for release in Q1 2010. Flock 3.0 will first be made available early next year as a private beta to those users of our current release. More to come soon on this incredibly exciting project. -Cheers Dan Burkhart dan 'at' flock.com Blogged with the Flock Browser
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Posted August 5, 2009 - 10:54am by Evan Hamilton
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Last Update, I Promise: Flock 2.5.2 is now available from our front door. It contains the latest Firefox security patch, the latest version of Flash, a fix for the Facebook Notifications Menu bug, and a fix for the Flickr/Yahoo! Mail conflict. Download and run the installer to manually upgrade; we'll be working on getting auto-updates out to you soon. Update: It looks like we'll be able to have the Facebook fix (as well as the Yahoo! Mail/Flickr fix & the latest Firefox security patch) all rolled up and delivered to you as 2.5.2 sometime next week, assuming we don't run into any gnarly bugs. We'll keep you informed. Update 2: The folks at Tabs Mix Plus have informed us that, regrettably, they do not and will not support Flock, so anyone running this extension will continue to have issues. There is already one alternative extension suggestion posted in the comments...please speak up if you have a recommendation! Hey Flockstars, Tabs Mix Plus, an extension for Firefox, issued an automatic update to their extension sometime in the last 24 hours. While it probably works great in Firefox, it appears they didn't test in Flock. Thus, Flock with Tabs Mix Plus v 0.3.8 installed will not load pages or show tabs.. We have and will continue to reach out to the Tabs Mix Plus team. In the meantime, to get Flock working you will need to disable Tabs Mix Plus: 1. Open Flock We'll let you know as soon as there is an update for the extension that works in Flock. There is also a bug currently causing the Facebook notifications menu in the lower right of the browser to show up blank. We have created a fix for this but unfortunately it cannot be sent invisibly over the air, it must be bundled in a browser update. We're working to get this fix and several others out to you as soon as possible...more info on this as I have it. Evan Hamilton Blogged with the Flock Browser
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Posted July 28, 2009 - 12:14pm by Evan Hamilton
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Hey Flockstars, Flock 2.5.1 is available today from the Flock homepage. This release fixes the Flickr issue I mentioned in my previous post as well as several other issues. You will have to manually update to 2.5.1 at this time by downloading and running the 2.5.1 installer from our homepage. We'll be pushing out auto-updates as soon as we've had sufficient time to test the auto-update process across all platforms (don't worry: manual updating is quick, safe, and clean). Please make sure you restart your computer after installing 2.5.1. Thanks to all of you who brought this issue to our attention. As always, if you experience any issues in the future, please don’t hesitate to let us know by posting to our GetSatisfaction page. We’ve always got our ears on. Our endless appreciation goes out to you for your patience during this period. Evan Hamilton Blogged with the Flock Browser
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