| Flock | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Flock 3.5.3 running onWindows 7 displaying its new tab page | |
| Developers | Flock, Inc. |
| Initial release | April 11, 2005; 20 years ago (2005-04-11)[1] |
| Final release | 3.5.3.4641  / 1 February 2011; 15 years ago (1 February 2011) |
| Preview release | none (n/a) [±] |
| Operating system | Windows,OS X,Linux[2] |
| Available in | Catalan, Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), English (US, Australian, British, Canadian), Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal + African Portuguese Speaking Countries and Brazil), Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Latin American and Spain) |
| Type | Web browser Feed reader |
| License | Freeware[3] |
| Website | Official website archives |
Flock is a discontinuedweb browser that specialized in providingsocial networking andWeb 2.0 facilities built into itsuser interface.[4]Earlier versions of Flock used theGeckoHTML rendering engine byMozilla.Version 2.6.2, released on January 27, 2011, was the last version based on Mozilla Firefox.[5][6]Starting with version 3, Flock was based onChromium and so used theWebKit rendering engine.[7][8]Flock was available as a free download, and supportedMicrosoft Windows,Mac OS X and, at one time,Linux as well.
Support for Flock was discontinued in April 2011.[9][10]
Flock was the successor to Round Two, who raised money fromBessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures, Shasta Ventures and otherangel investors.Bart Decrem andGeoffrey Arone co-founded the company.[11] Flock raised $15 million in a fourth round of funding led byFidelity Ventures on May 22, 2008, for an estimated total of $30 million, according to CNET. The company's previous investors, Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures, and Shasta Ventures, also participated in the round.[12]
In January 2011, Flock Inc. was acquired byZynga.[13] The browser has been discontinued, with support ending April 26, 2011.[14]
Flock 2.5 integrated social networking and media services includingMySpace,[15]Facebook,YouTube,Twitter,Flickr,Blogger,Gmail,Yahoo! Mail, etc.[16] Whenlogging into any of the supported social services, Flock could track updates from friends: profiles, uploaded photos, and more. Flock 2.5 addedTwitter Search functionality, multi-casting of status updates to multiple services, and the introduction ofinstant messaging viaFacebook Chat in the browser.
Other features include:
In December 2007, Flock won theMashableOpen Web Awards for Applications and Widgets[26] and in March 2008, Flock won theSouth By Southwest[27] Web Award for Community.[28]
CNET gave the Mac OS X version of Flock 1.0 the title of "Best Mac Software of 2007".[29]PC World'sHarry McCracken reviewed Flock as his "New Favorite Web Browser".[30]
In February 2008,AOL announced that it would discontinue support for theNetscape browser, and recommended Flock andFirefox as alternative browsers to its userbase ofNetscape 9 users.[31] For the Netscape 8 userbase,AOL recommended only the Flock browser to its users.[32] In March 2008, Flock announced that they had seen "nearly 3 million downloads" and a 135% increase in active users in the first two months of 2008. They also announced "more than 70 percent of Flock users making it their default browser of choice".[33]
In May 2008, Flock won the Social Networking category of theWebby Awards.[34][35] Flock was nominated for this award along withFacebook,Bebo andNing.
When Flock's discontinuation was announced in April 2011, reviewer Joey Sneddon ofOMG! Ubuntu! offered some analysis: "Whether this was down to poor implementation design wise (one needs only glance at 'Rockmelt' for an example of a social browser done right) or just general apathy towards having alerts from twitter, flickr, facebook, digget al. in your face all of the time is moot: Flock has flocked off and for all its innovation it never quite lived up to its own hype."[9]
Upon exiting beta, Flock won a number of awards:[23]