Flock is a new browser that seems promising. This Palo-Alto-based company developed a browser based on Firefox with powerful social features:
Flock is a new browser, built on top of firefox. It is a functional browser with excellent features (including firefox features like tabbed browsing, etc.). What really makes is stand out are two additional features they’ve added to build social networking directly into the browsing experience: social bookmarking and a wysiwyg blog writing tool.Flock has integrated del.icio.us-type features right into the browser. When you are on a page you would like to bookmark, simply press a “+” button on the top left of the toolbar and the page is automatically included in your bookmark area (called your “breadcrumbs”). You can also tag bookmarks, of course. Additional features include your “watchlist” (people who’s bookmarks you would like to monitor), and “groups” (basically, defined groups of flockers linking to this category). Breadcrumbs, Watchlists and Groups all have RSS feeds (of course).
Why do I blog this? I am looking forward to see more about this; I am very interested in augmenting browsing, especially with social features as we did with Roberto for our rss4you project (french aggregator). What is interesting in Flock is the interoperability with other applications like doing drag and drop Flickr photos into a post as described in social browser. However, calling this a 'social browser' is a bit like an overemphasis on the social thing, since social activities are richer than just tagging. It's a good step anyway. I was also wondering about why developing a new browser instead of providing a plugin/add-on for Firefox; time will tell.
Technorati Tags: flock, social software, web