Development

Hey Flockstars,

Update: Flock 1.0.3, which contains the fix to the "is is" bug, is now live here on www.flock.com. Auto-updates will be activated later this week.

As you may have noticed this morning, when you input a status to Facebook with your People sidebar it adds an extra "is" (resulting in fun statuses like "Evan Hamilton is is not stuttering, really").  Additionally, all your friends will have "is is" in their status.  This is due to a Facebook API change that has created a minor but visible Flock bug.  Facebook is trying out status without the "is", to allow more freedom of status expression.

It is my sincere pleasure to announce the release of Flock version 1.0. The Social Web Browser is now available to download from www.flock.com. This event marks a significant milestone for our company. When I arrived at Flock one year ago, the primary goal I set for the company was to transform us from a great idea company into a world-class innovation and execution company. Since that time, the tremendous work from all across Flock’s expanding organization has demonstrated this team’s appetite and capability to do exactly that: we upgraded the underlying technology platform for Flock with version 0.8 in Q1 of this year, we enhanced significantly the dependability, discoverability and feature integration with version 0.9 in Q2, we released over two hundred bug fixes and feature enhancements with version 0.9.1 in Q3, and today we are launching the full release of Flock 1.0, with the integration of “people in the browser”, available as a free download for Mac, PC and Linux.

The 1.0 Social Web Browser incorporates all your friends across numerous popular social services (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter). We hear from our 1.0 beta users every day that this product has changed the way they are engaging with and experiencing the Web. The most frequently used adjective describing this version of Flock is ‘addictive’. We take that as a real compliment, and a strong vote that Flock is onto something very special.
 
Flock 1.0 is also a platform, and you will see an expansion of the social and media services with which Flock is integrated early in the New Year, along with the formal release of our 1.0 API for developers and third parties around the world to leverage, add services and further contribute to Flock’s capabilities.

With your help, and the millions of new users we plan to serve in the year ahead, we will continue to be champions of open-standards, and strive to continually deliver unique and meaningful experiences that place the user at the center of everything, and are made possible only from within the browser.
 
We’re incredibly excited by the launch of Flock 1.0. The Flock team is both grateful and enormously proud of the overwhelmingly positive response to our 1.0 release, and I want to personally thank all of the passionate community members and Flock users who have emailed enthusiastic notes of encouragement. Your tremendous feedback fuels our desire to push the boundaries of browser innovation. We have great ambitions to continually improve and evolve Flock, and hope that we can continue to count on your passionate engagement to help us guide our course.

I welcome your comments and feedback – either here or via email (shawn at flock.com).

Thanks,

Shawn

Blogged with Flock

Hello Everyone,

As a new addition to the team here at Flock, I’d like to take a moment to share some of my first impressions with you.  This is likely my last chance to offer the candid perspective of the ‘new guy’. First of all, it’s great to be here. Let me briefly explain why.

Flock is preparing for a very important milestone in our company’s history. We are on the cusp of completing Flock 1.0, which integrates your friends from your favorite social services into the browser, paving the way for easy communication and sharing with people you care about, no matter where you are on the Web. This is by no means a modest ambition.

Nobody at Flock joined to take on modest ambitions. In this next version we’ve built a browser that integrates 15 popular services from around the Web, and succeeded in allowing them to work well with each other, which we believe to be a tremendous accomplishment. We’re quite proud of what we’ve done and look forward to hearing your impressions after you have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the product. We’re hopeful that you too will become ‘dyed in the wool’ converts who can’t imagine browsing any other way.

In my brief tenure here at Flock, I’ve quickly arrived at a sense of great appreciation for the many elements that need to be in place in order to deliver a noteworthy and important product innovation. In most cases, there needs to be an ever-changing combination of vision, talent, focus, and flexibility (and these elements don’t naturally co-exist well together). I’ve been impressed by the incredible concentration of talent here at Flock, and how these elements have all been balanced to complete such an ambitious product vision.

Along with our excitement around the release of Flock 1.0, we’re collectively challenged and inspired by our ambitious roadmap ahead. No rest for the weary here. We’re just now scratching the surface of what we believe the Flock browser is capable of delivering.

Longfellow said, “most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.”

I think we would have liked that guy, and he clearly would be an avid Flock user.

We are now in the midst of our private beta and will be sharing a public release candidate for Flock in the coming weeks.  Flock 1.0 is on it’s final approach, and it’s well worth the wait.

-Dan

Blogged with Flock

Previously under wraps for TechCrunch40, we are now able to show you a preview of this exciting next stage of our product.  You can read our Press Release about the unveiling of Flock 1.0 at TechCrunch40 here.
Want to get your hands on it?  Visit www.flock.com/privatebeta to get a sneak peek of the new features and sign up for a private beta that we will be launching in the coming weeks.  Be one of the first to see and test drive the revolutionary next step of Flock!

Shawn

Blogged with Flock

It is my great pleasure to announce that Flock has been selected as one of the 40 hottest startup companies by TechCrunch40 (out of over 700, from more than 26 countries around the world).  The event is being held today and tomorrow in San Francisco and Flock will be in attendance to do our first public demonstration of Flock 1.0, The Social Web Browser.

Check back later today, when we will have lots of additional information to share with you...

Shawn

Blogged with Flock

I’m pleased to announce the release of Flock 0.9.1 less than 70 days after the launch of 0.9. Today's upgrade to Flock includes over two hundred bug fixes and feature enhancements. While many of these fixes and enhancements were derived from our internal QA process, many also were brought to our attention by our early 0.9 test drivers. Thank you all for your invaluable contribution in making Flock better and better!

This release is a prime example of the speed at which Flock is now developing, innovating, building, and shipping. These enhancements will further strengthen the foundation for our v1.0 release, scheduled for release later this fall.

While the complete list of improvements to Flock 0.9.1 is too large to list here, here is a highlight of key enhancements:

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback – either here or via email (shawn at flock.com).

Thanks,

Shawn

Blogged with Flock

Hey Flockstars,

We're always trying to make Flock better.  Features, options, performance, discoverability...the whole gamut.  Part of this process involves product testing: we bring in folks who have never used Flock and see what they like, what they discover, and what they don't.  It's helpful to get a fresh perspective; we use Flock all the time, so we already know where everything is.

Our latest round of product testing has been an in-depth look at how people use Flock over weeks, rather than just their first run.  We give our testers Flock and have them use it for a few weeks, reporting back every week or so.  Now that we've done this with non-Flockers, we'd like to bring some of you into the study!  Here are the details:

Hey Flockstars,

You tell us a lot of things.  I spend much of my day reading your posts on our forum and blog, reading your /feedback messages, checking out your personal blogs, or just chatting with you.  And as much as I enjoy doing this, it's not just for fun.  We're always listening to what you have to say because it's incredibly valuable.  And, we're acting on this feedback whenever possible.

It was wonderful to receive such a great response to our recent, major upgrade to Flock. It takes talented, incredibly smart people to make great products and to create a game-changing platform like Flock’s. Flock has continued to invest in building a world-class team and has hired some of the sharpest professionals available, and today I want to introduce some of our newest staff members.
 
David Westendorf recently joined the Flock executive team as Vice President of Business Development & Partnerships. David is a consumer behavior nut with over 17 years in marketing and business development, and comes to us from Kodak, where he ran the worldwide partnerships group for Kodak Gallery. David will help us to distribute Flock far and wide, and align ourselves with more innovative and dynamic companies who can help us spread the word.
 
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Clayton Stark is now Vice President of Engineering at Flock. Previously Clayton was Chief Operating Officer of Mercurial Communications, Inc. where he directed the development of the Netscape 8.x browsers for AOL. Clayton brings highly specialized experience to this pivotal role and has boundless passion to build the world’s first and only social web browser.

Building Flock is decidedly a team sport and I want to welcome the amazing players who have joined the company over the last few month. These team members each bring a wealth of energy, ideas and professional experience to their essential positions at Flock.

Here are the newest members of our expanding team:

Brij, Software Engineer
Bruno, Sr. Software Engineer
Bryan, Jr. Product Manager
Garrett, QA Engineer
Joshua, User Support Intern
Justin, Sr. Software Engineer
Len, Director, Office of Project Management
Leon, Team Lead, Engineering Services
Matthew, Sr. Software Engineer
Ryan, Sr. Software Engineer
Tim, Lead Designer

We’re growing fast and the pace of development is increasing each week. I look forward to sharing more exciting news – made possible by this tremendous team – in the weeks and months ahead.
 
As always, I welcome your comments and feedback – either here or via email (shawn at flock.com).
 
Thanks,
 
Shawn

Blogged with Flock

We've recovered from a great launch week and are elated by the incredibly positive response to Flock 0.9. 

Here's a sample of what people are saying: