Flock Blog

At Flock, we love to hear from you. We want to make sure that Flock continues to help you discover, enjoy and share the relationships and content you’re passionate about. So while you’ve been talking, we’ve been listening. The result is a new version of Flock that reflects the new ways you want to use your favorite social browser along with two of your favorite networks—Twitter and Facebook.

The new version that we’re releasing today lets you keep your finger on the pulse of your social networks, yet it gives you the freedom to explore online without having to click back and forth between websites, tabs, applications and content. And now, Flock is the only browser that let’s you take Facebook Chat with you wherever you go on the Web. You can also drag and drop photos, videos, links and text into your chats, making everything simple, social and fun.

Flock 2.5 makes sharing and discovering content fast and easy. You just drag and drop URLs, photos, videos, text or other things you find on the web to a friend’s Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or other profile in Flock’s People Sidebar and it’s instantly shared. And now Flock comes with Twitter Search right in MyWorld, so you can keep up to date on all the topics you’re most interested in and save them in the best place possible, your Flock browser.

Last but not least is FlockCast, an effortless way to share information across your social networks. With FlockCast, you can broadcast anything from blog posts and picture uploads to Tweets and MySpace status updates directly to your Facebook profile. And when you share a URL in a Twitter message, Flock automatically shortens the URL.

Clearly, this new version of Flock is for those of you that are Twitter and Facebook fans. Our Facebook users have grown over 80% since the beginning of 2009! And, on Twitter, we are proud and appreciative of in the great things you’re writing about Flock across the Twittersphere… (check out #flock).

Flock’s popularity has been almost entirely driven by the generous recommendations coming from each of you (we just passed 7.5 million downloads). We’re extremely grateful for your support and hope that you’ll keep spreading the word. And now we’re giving you the opportunity to earn the recognition and rewards you deserve by telling your friends about Flock on Facebook at http://www.flock.com/refer.

As always, let us know about your experiences with Flock. What you have to say is important--and we hear you.

Thanks.

-Shawn

Hey Flockstars,

I'm super excited to announce a brand new tool for all of you passionate Flockstars out there!

Top Flockstars is a way for you to get recognized and rewarded for your hard work telling the world how much you love Flock.

We thrive on the word-of-mouth evangelism that you all generate.  The majority of our 7.5 million downloads have been generated by you telling your friends, family, and colleagues about Flock.  You love Flock, you tell your friends, and therefore we are able to keep making Flock better for you.  We're immensely grateful for this gift you give us, and we wanted to give something back to you.

It's pretty simple:

1. Log into Top Flockstars using your Facebook account - we'll show you which of your friends are already using Flock
2. Use our form to tell your non-Flocking friends to download Flock
3. For each person who downloads Flock and logs into Facebook, you'll get a token
4. Spend your tokens on nifty rewards!

If you're super-persuasive with your friends, you'll get visibility on the Top Flockstars leaderboard (I'm looking forward to watching the competition).  You can also compete on a smaller scale with the friends leaderboard, which shows you how you're doing against your own Facebook friends.  And, of course, you get the joy of knowing you've turned your friends on to an awesome browser.

This program is made possible through the power of Facebook Connect.  Instead of requiring you to sign up for a new account to participate, all you need are your Facebook credentials.  Simple.  We're pretty sure that Top Flockstars is the first program to use Facebook Connect in this way, and psyched to break new ground by creating another interesting way to get the most out of Facebook and Flock working together.

This program is all about you, and as always your feedback is key. Let us know what you think.

Now go get 'em!

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

While we often think of social media as a way to connect with our broad circle of friends, its influence has gone beyond the bounds of entertainment and communication to truly democratize information and to transform “readers” and “consumers” into publishers. Flock celebrates the diversity of human self-expression by making it simple to participate, publish and “write to the web” from your browser.

On May 4th and 5th, leading human rights advocates, journalists, and scientists will convene at The Soul of the New Machine conference being held on the U.C. Berkeley campus.  The conference will look at how technology can empower human rights around the world. Conference participants will explore how new developments in science and technology can be applied to human rights evidence gathering and analysis, advocacy, and outreach. The conference participants will learn about the latest advancements in mobile technologies and new media and how these systems have already been applied to expose war crimes and other serious violations of human rights and to disseminate this information in real time throughout the world.

Flock is a proud sponsor of this event. Flock’s users reside in 192 countries and territories around the world. This diverse global community has collectively engaged in more than 400,000,000 social actions including blog posts, uploaded photos, shared images, video and information content along with a myriad of communications and people connections.

How can Flock help empower human rights? By helping our users to document their reality, expose their truth, advocate change and raise their voice! The team at Flock salutes its users who are active all around the world shaping their online experience and their community every day.  We want to learn about your personal story. Let us know how Flock empowers your social action for social good. Please email your story to makingadifference at flock dot com.

If you’d like to learn more about getting involved and/or attending The Soul of the New Machine conference, go to www.newmachineconference.org. Those who are not able to attend in person can watch live video streaming and blogging of conference events on the conference site starting May 4th.

Knowledge and awareness are the important first steps in this journey.  We hope you’ll join us.

Shawn Hardin
CEO Flock

Felicia Bradley, photographer of the "floatin'" photo, has won the Flocktography Photo Challenge Grand Prize with 54% of your votes!

Floatin'

All the shots in this challenge evoked powerful emotions, but clearly Felicia's fun, relaxed, and social image clearly resonated with our community of confident, fun, social Flockstars.  It's a great shot, and we're very proud to have it on our homepage along with the other finalists.

Felicia will be receiving a "Eye-Fi Share" Wireless Memory card, which allows her to upload her photos to Flickr (and elsewhere) directly from her camera.  Felicia, we hope that this only further encourages you to keep taking fantastic photos and share them with the world!

Thanks to everyone who submitted photos and voted for the Grand Prize Winner!

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

UPDATE: You've chosen Felicia Bradley's "Floatin'" as the Flocktography Photo Challenge Grand Prize Winner!

Hey Flockstars,

In 2008 we launched the first ever Flocktography Photo Challenge.  We asked you, our fantastic community, to share photos of yours that you felt represented the feeling you get when you use Flock...the excitement, the sense of community, the ease of use, etc.

We received over 100 submissions to our Flocktography group on Flickr, and I have to say that I was blown away by the photos.  We have some seriously talented Flocktographers here, and choosing finalists was extremely difficult.  Kudos and major thanks to everyone who submitted.

All of our finalists will be receiving nifty Flock swag packs and are currently being featured in rotation on the flock.com homepage (and they look fantastic there!).

Choosing a Grand Prize Winner

Now it's your turn to vote and choose the Grand Prize Winner of the Flocktography Photo Challenge!  The Grand Prize Winner will receive, in addition to the Flock swag they've already gotten, an "Eye-Fi Share" Wireless Memory Card.

We got to see Eye-Fi in action as a fellow candidate at the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal's "Emerging Tech Awards".  Like us, these folks get that sharing is one of the most important interactions on the modern web.  With the Eye-Fi Share, you can automatically and wirelessly upload photos taken on your digital camera to your computer or a photo sharing site like Flickr.  We hope that this will help our Grand Prize Winner to continue to upload amazing photos to Flickr!

Without further adieu, the finalists:

友情長存

Floatin'

twister+bubbles

More Flocktography to come?

We really enjoyed the enthusiasm around this challenge and got some great images for our homepage.  But there are certainly some things we could have done better: 

1. Been clearer about what types of photos we wanted - We had to pass up on some great photos because they didn't really work on the Flock homepage.  Butterfly and puppy pictures are adorable, but don't necessarily define the feeling of Flock.  We weren't as clear as we could have been.
2. Been better at keeping you in the loop - I forgot to post a message when I closed entries on the Flickr group, and mightily confused a few folks.
3. Been faster - What with the holidays and all the hard work we're doing on the browser, this challenge managed to stretch on far too long.  Next time it needs to be shorter.

What did you think about the Flocktography Photo Challenge?  Would you be interested in seeing another?  What could we do better in addition to the items mentioned above?

Lastly, I'd like to call out my personal favorite from the runners up:

That dog has excellent taste in browsers.

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Earlier this year, Flock announced a specialized Eco-Edition of our browser geared towards those interested in environmental topics ranging from climate change to alternative energy, from hybrid vehicles to green design and green cuisine. As part of this release, we pledged that 10% of the proceeds generated from searches conducted in Flock’s Eco-Edition would be donated back to the environmental organization deemed most popular and fitting by the community of Eco-Edition users.

The Eco-Edition had a fantastic run, and was promoted by key partners such as TreeHugger, Grist, PlanetGreen, Ecorazzi, GroovyGreen and AllTop. We’re very appreciative for the great demonstration of support by all of these companies, and are pleased to announce the award of 10% of Flock’s Eco-Edition proceeds have been delivered to the Environmental Defense Fund (www.edf.org), by the choice of Flock Eco-Edition users.

Interestingly, people using Flock’s Eco-Edition conducted 80% more searches per user as compared to Flock’s overall population of users. This is a great testament to the fact that people can and will change their behavior when they believe that their actions will have an immediate and direct benefit to the world around them. For this, we’re grateful and honored to give to the E.D.F. and be part of initiating this great experiment. 

Flock will not be able to continue supporting an Eco-specific Edition going forward, but we encourage everyone to customize their own versions of Flock to best suit their own unique assemblage of Feeds, Bookmarks, Friends and Media Streams to keep them informed about their own view of the dynamic world we live in.

Many Thanks,

Dan Burkhart

Vice President, Marketing and Business Development

Dan at Flock dot com

We’re quickly approaching the holiday that is designed to make you pause and think about the person in your life that is most deserving of a gesture of fondness. For some it’s a big deal…for others, it’s more of a device to drum up some action in their life that doesn’t currently exist. (Go get ‘em, Tiger!)

This Valentine’s Day, we’d like you to turn your friends on to the browser that helps put people together. Instead of handing off an unoriginal box of chocolates, tell the people you care about to download Flock and you’ll be turning them on to a browser that inspires people to stay connected with the friends and things they care about most in their lives.  Take it a step further and offer a personal tutorial to show this person how to get their accounts set up, and voila - you’ll find that your Valentine will be impressed and amazed by what a guru you are.

Now you’ve just turned someone on to a browser that will change the way that they experience the Web, you’ve impressed them with your knowledge, and you’ve done it for free. Knowledge is a dangerous thing when you’re a bit crafty. We trust you can take it from there.

Thanks for helping to turn people on to Flock! We hope things go well. We’re always here to help.

Send us some notes to let us know how things went for you (email: flockteam at flock dot com). We always like to hear about good Flock introductions! We’ll be dropping some packages of goodies in the mail to those that make us laugh and cheer the most.

-Cheers

Dan Burkhart
V.P. of Marketing and Business Development
dan@flock.com

2008 was a great year for Flock. We launched Flock 2.0, added integration with MySpace, Digg and WebMail, secured new funding and received numerous awards. And we reached an important milestone: Flock has been downloaded over 6 million times. While our technical accomplishments, partnerships and kudos from bloggers and the press mean a great deal to us, the most gratifying accomplishments of the year came from you, the people that use Flock every day.

Together you‘ve made over 41 million log-ins across applications like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. You’ve accessed nearly seven million photos and videos using the Media Bar and 25 million feeds via the Feeds Sidebar. You’ve stayed in touch with your friends by collectively loading more than 150 million people each and every month into the People Sidebar! And you’ve made almost one million blog posts using Flock. What you value inspires our direction and you’ve rewarded us by using Flock in record numbers. And by telling your friends about Flock. Your recommendations have been invaluable and, by our estimates, have contributed to more than 90% of our growth in 2008! You continue to show us that we’re on the right track.

We know what is driving your use of Flock. Your life isn’t slowing down. You’re engaged and more social than ever before. You want to know what’s going on and there’s a lot you want to share. You’ve got more friends and you want to make sure you don’t miss a thing. And sometimes that can be a bit much. No worries. That’s how we’ll continue to help, by making it easier for you to stay connected, but never tethered or walled in.

With a new year comes new opportunity and the entire Flock team is off and running to make 2009 great. We’ll continue to go where your needs take us, and we’ll do it by maintaining our commitment to innovation. While ‘traditional’ values like quality are important to us, Flock isn’t like your parents’ browser. At Flock we have a new world view of the browser and it’s all about you.

We’ll continue to innovate and find better ways to help you connect with the people, information and things you care about. But you’re the best source of inspiration for Flock, so keep visiting the site and letting us know what you think and what you need. After all, at Flock it will always be all about you.

Thank you for a tremendous 2008!

Shawn Hardin

Hey Flockstars,

I just wanted to remind you that (nearly) every week I hold Community Office Hours on Monday at 11am PST.

While you're always welcome to contact us on GetSatisfaction, IRC, or by email (evan at flock dot com), I am often unable to talk in real-time during the week.  Things come up...meetings, brainstorms, sudden bouts of synchronized dancing and singing, etc.

During Community Office Hours I am entirely focused on and available to the Flockstar community.  Ask questions, give suggestions, or just send me awesome lolcat links.

I promise that from 11am-noon on Mondays I will not multi-task or get pulled into meetings.  I may Tweet if you send me a really funny lolcat.  No promises there.

My contact info is always available on my bio, but I'll repost here for your convenience:

email: evan at flock dot com
AIM: evanhprotean
MSN: evanhamilton_protean at hotmail dot com
Gchat: evanhamiltonLD at gmail dot com
Skype: evan.hamilton
IRC: irc.flock.com, #flock

Talk to you in a bit!

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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.

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