Flock Blog

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is “what’s the business model for Flock?” 

Here’s why we think Flock is an exciting business opportunity and how we envision creating a business that is sustainable over the long term.

Firefox broke the IE monopoly in the browser space.  Users once again have meaningful choice on the web, and web developers and publishers are responding to that by making their sites work for Firefox users.  Users understand the value of the browser in keeping them safe online and providing them with a better user experience.  Web developers are able to take advantage of the modern web standards that are supported in Firefox.  Industry leaders are recognizing the power of the browser platform.  In sum: the browser is back! 

In the ten years since Netscape 1.0 launched, the web has evolved tremendously, but the user experience of the web browser has remained largely unchanged.  Firefox  supports a host of modern web standards and eliminates many of the online nuisances that have sprouted up over the last decade.  Still, a user migrating from Netscape 1 to Firefox 1 would feel right at home.  We think there’s room for innovating the web browser user experience, and the open soure, cross-platform, and actively developed Mozilla codebase is the perfect technology platform for such innovation.

The business case?  Well, Microsoft set the price of the browser to $0 quite a while ago.  That proved to be a major hurdle back in the Netscape days, but what’s changed over the past few years is that online referral- and search-related business models have matured dramatically and in fact power big chunks of the Internet.  Huge businesses (like AOL Search) and thousands of niche online ventures alike are built around Google and Yahoo’s adword programs.  These same business models are now providing the financial footing for web browsers.  Opera’s CEO recently explained that his company was able to release the browser for free thanks to an expanded search sponsorship arrangement with Google.  The Mozilla Foundation has alluded to search related business arrangements and has created a for-profit subsidiary.  These success stories show that even simple search “distribution” integration points in the browser can provide a solid financial footing for browser providers, and do so in a way that enhances the user experience (remember, the search box was added to Firefox because users needed a faster way to search online).  In sum, we’re quite comfortable that, if enough users choose our browser, we can keep the lights on here at Flock without violating user’s privacy or compromising the user experience. 

But of course over time we want to do better then just keeping the lights on.  We want to build a successful, sustainable business.  While there’s certainly money to be made from stripmining users, as proven by the numerous malware providers and established mainstream companies that routinely abuse their customers’ trust, we believe that, over time, the most successful companies will be those that earn their users’ trust and focus pretty obsessively on solving problems for those users.  Best of all, it’s the right thing to do.

Let me give an example: offering users choice at all times is very important to us.  Right now, Flock already works with a wide range of blogging platforms (Wordpress, Six Apart and Blogger), but, as of yet, we don’t offer a choice of social bookmarks providers or photo sharing services.  Fixing that is a high priority.  Our goal is to always offer users a number of choices, and, in addition, allow them to plug in any service that supports a standard, in the same way that the Firefox and Flock searchboxes and the Flock blog editor already do. 

Firefox is a perfect case in point that demonstrates how you can do well by doing what’s right.  The project started off as a skunkworks project by a couple of guys who wanted to build a better browser.  The Firefox crew spent several years obsessing about how to build the perfect browser for regular users.  In the process, they were able to create a bond of trust with their users.  When a larger group of users started looking for a better alternative, their friends pointed them to Firefox.  The organization has done well as a result: a year ago, there were a dozen employees at the Mozilla Foundation, now there are several times that many working for the Mozilla Corporation. 

So here’s the plan: we’re going to experiment and innovate.  We plan to make a ton of mistakes, listen to our users, focus on building the best product that meets our users’ needs.  Where there are obvious, proven, opportunities to generate revenues in ways that respect our users’ privacy and don’t hinder the user experience, we will pursue those.  But we firmly believe that doing right by our users is the best way to build a sustainable, successful company, so expect us to focus pretty much all of our energy on innovating the web browser experience and earning your trust.