Hey Flockstars,

I want to clarify Flock's intentions and the new direction of the Flock extensions page, extensions.flock.com  (EFC).

We haven't stopped hosting extensions, we've just simplified the back-end submission process, and content that we host.  One of the great bonuses of this is our new ability to host Flock themes.

Flock still embraces extensions and themes, but we will leverage Mozilla's secure back-end hosting environment by encouraging you to get extensions from addons.mozilla.org.  We’ll be dedicating our resources to responding to your needs and adding new and exciting capabilities onto the Flock browser. 

The broad majority of Firefox extensions have always worked in Flock. Most Flockstars are aware of this and do not visit EFC for their extension needs.  With the shift in focus to content that is Flock-specific, EFC now serves the niche that addons.mozilla.org does not: we provide extensions that enhance the many specific features that are unique to Flock.

Almost all of the developers that have their extensions removed from EFC had their extensions hosted on addons.mozilla.org already.  We continue to support development of extensions for Flock and Firefox, and the developers who have interacted with EFC in the past continue to talk with us about the future of extensions for Flock.  New developers are encouraged to check out our documentation and join us on IRC.
 
I hope this clarifies our position.  You can still have all the feature benefits of Flock and take advantage of available Firefox extensions.

Community feedback is of the utmost importance to us and will always guide the development of Flock, our website, our extensions and our company.  As always, I welcome your comments and emails.

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Flock isn't about technology. Flock is about a feeling.

While the technology powers Flock, the reason you and I love this browser is because it makes the web fun and easy again.  Using Flock gets me excited about going online, keeps me in better contact with my friends, and makes my day easier.

With the new look of Flock's homepage and tour, we're fully embracing this feeling.  We scoured Flickr for days finding the perfect images that represented the fun, freedom, and ease of Flock. We've been all smiles viewing these pages day after day as we prepped them for launch.

Of course, nothing is permanent on the web and we're going to want to keep our homepage fresh with some new images in a few months.  Which brings us to...

The Flocktography Photo Challenge!

We want to take this fun, relaxed feeling even farther and put YOUR photos on the homepage!  Nobody knows the joy that is Flock better than you, and we're sure that you've got tons of photos of you and your friends that will shine on our homepage.

All you have to do is submit your photos.  We'll choose the finalists, and your fellow Flockstars will vote on who will be the winners!

The winner of the Flocktography Photo Challenge will have their photo featured on our homepage, and will also receive a collection of awesome Flock swag!

Entering the Challenge

Each Flockstar can submit up to 3 photos to our Flocktography group on Flickr.

Photos must be at least 917px wide by 385px tall.

Any person prominently featured in these photos should have given verbal or signed approval to be featured on flock.com...which means you shouldn't include a celebrity or musician photo unless you can get their approval.

Winning the Challenge

A group of qualified folks at Flock will choose the finalists for the Flocktography photo challenge.  Finalists will be called out in a discussion thread on the Flocktography Flickr Group.  At that point we'll let you know how YOU can vote for the winners.

Please spread the word about this contest to all your awesome photographer friends (who, of course, you've already turned into Flockstars) so we can have a really awesome set of submissions.

We can't wait to see what you all come up with!

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

We’ve got a fun product to tell you about. Today, Flock launched its latest product that is geared towards people who are passionate about keeping up with Fashion, Entertainment and Lifestyle trends. Flock’s ‘Gloss Edition’ is the world’s first fashion and entertainment browser designed to help people keep up with the latest fashion trends and celebrity lifestyle scoop (o.k. gossip).

We’ve put together a bundle of the best sources on the Web to bring you your daily dose of fashion inspiration, celebrity dish, and trends by including over 35 leading content providers and partners, from Glam, PopSugar, InStyle, ThisNext, DesignerApparel, AllTop and others. The best part about it is that all of this information comes to you, and is updated immediately as news and images are published. You’ll never miss a beat and people will wonder how you stay on top of it all.

We’ve also worked with a great panel of women to design a theme for the Gloss Edition of Flock that is pink, ‘soft’, fun and well suited for the fashionistas’ never-ending pursuit of stylish individuality.

We had fun building the Gloss Edition and we hope you have fun with the experience that it delivers. Check it out, and please don’t keep it a secret. Tell your friends about Flock.com/gloss.

-Cheers

Dan Burkhart
Vice President, Marketing
Dan at flock dot com

I have a great job.

Every day, a large chunk of my day is spent reading feedback from Flockstars like you on Twitter, our forums, our blog, our feedback tool, across the blogsphere and beyond.  I do a lot of logging of feature requests, troubleshooting and explaining features, but I also get to read an amazing amount of wonderful, positive feedback.  I send the highlights out to the Flock staff, but I truly get to bask in all this great feedback.  It's really heartening to see that we are making the web browsing experience so much better for so many people.

This feedback is so awesome, in fact, that I can't keep holding it in.  I want to share this love, and give props to the folks who are telling the world how much they love Flock.  Welcome to the first edition of "You Can't Make This Stuff Up", an ongoing segment in which I'll be reposting the love that people are giving to Flock.

If you wish for us to remove something you said or credit you differently, please contact me at evan at flock dot com.  The opinions expressed on the blogs and Twitter accounts we link to are not those of me or Flock.  Unless they're cool.

Flock 1.2 love

"If you are using web 2.0 tools you NEED to use the Flock browser: Flock rules! Goodbye FireFox. I'll miss you!"
Posted on Twitter by Brad Trnavsky

“The best thing that’s ever happened to me.  For the Web 2.0 obsessed like me, this will make your life easier.”
Blog Post by Margot Stephenson

"Have been using Flock for 2 days now. The social integration is awesome! It is a step beyond Firefox as Firefox is beyond Internet Exploder."
Posted on Twitter by Bradley C Hughes

"It is the best browser I have ever used.  Better than Firefox by a thousand miles, better than Safari by 10,000 miles, and better than Internet Explorer and Netscape by a million miles."
Blog Post by Susan Vaughn

Love for Flock 2 Beta (one):

"I am abusing flock 2.0b1 (26 tabs currently open) and its holding up like a dream "
Posted on Twitter by Ryan Skadberg

Holy hotcakes, batman! Flock 2.0 is blazing!!"
Posted on Twitter by Amy Hussey

"Hello permanent use of Flock 2, bye bye FireFox and Safari. It's loooove for this social media junkie.."
Posted on Twitter by Leslie

"Flock 2 + Firefox 3 engine = best browser ever"
Posted on Twitter by Max Barkhatov

Thanks so much to everyone who broadcasts their love of Flock every day.  We appreciate it more than we can express, and I'm looking forward to publishing more of it in the next "You Can't Make This Stuff Up".

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

The recent surge of interest for the Flock browser has given us a lot of energy to make sure that we’re making the Flock experience available for as many people as possible around the world. As with most of our feature decisions, we looked at serving the largest audiences of users first, and so it was an easy decision for us to focus on our largest non-English speaking market of Germany to deliver our first ‘deeply localized’ build of Flock. The Social Web is exploding in Germany, and so it is natural that there are many fans of Flock interested in a more authentic, truly German experience. The Flock German edition is available here. 

What does this mean? Well, our custom German experience is more than just ‘skin’ deep. The Flock DE edition ships with local content, media streams and service offerings from the most popular sites in Germany. (For example: sports content from sites like Sports1.de, and bundesliga.de rather than ESPN.com. News from Spiegel.de and FinancialTimes.de instead of CNN.com). Search services deliver German search results (for example, Yahoo.de, Amazon.de, eBay.de, Wikipedia.de, etc). Social sites like Facebook, Flickr and YouTube are defaulted to return the German experience.

We’re very proud of the German experience provided in the Flock DE version. We’re also looking forward to working with our dedicated volunteer localizers worldwide to continue rolling out similarly ‘deep localizations’ for other countries going forward. We plan to upgrade the DE edition to Flock 2 (built on the same technology as Firefox 3) as soon as our Flock 2 beta cycles are completed.

If you are a German speaking Flockstar and enjoy the German Flock experience, please help us spread the word and let people know that there is a much better way to experience the Web, with Flock.

-Cheers/Prost

Dan Burkhart

Vice President, Marketing
dan at flock dot com

Hello all,

With all of the attention around the imminent release of Mozilla’s Firefox 3 technology, we’ve been beaming with enthusiasm about what’s in store for Flock fans. Last night, we pushed our public beta (one) of Flock 2 live.  Flock 2 incorporates all of the latest features found in Flock’s recent public release, but it runs on the latest and greatest Firefox 3 technology from Mozilla. So now you don’t have to abandon your love affair with your new favorite browser to check out the latest performance, security and feature enhancements from Mozilla. We’ve got them all right here for you!

Flock 2 is FAST. Manages memory better, and is more secure, thanks to Mozilla’s Firefox 3 technology.

As with all beta software, you might experience some imperfections. We’ve all been running the Flock 2 beta internally for several months, gathering our notes and fixing these imperfections as they arise, but now we could really use your assistance to make Flock 2 the only choice for those that refuse to stand still, and refuse to accept a world in which their browser just browses for them.

The Flock 2 beta marks a very important watershed moment for us. And we have some amazing things planned for the remainder of the year, so please help us refine this product by running Flock 2 beta (one), and logging imperfections by using the ‘bug icon’ in the upper right of your browser.

We will make the full migration to an official release of Flock 2 as soon as possible, pending your feedback.

We’ve got fuel in our tanks, and we’re here to show the world how much they’ve been missing by using plain browsers. Get on board, and help us out by sending your comments, love, enthusiasm, and of course…by telling your friends about Flock!

Our mission is all about you!

-Dan Burkhart

VP of Marketing
dan at flock dot com

The beta period for Flock’s 1.2 browser is now officially over. Although we continually juggle inbound requests for new service integrations, we couldn’t be happier about this latest release with Digg and Pownce built in. Two weeks ago, we released the Flock 1.2 beta and have since been inundated with heaps of great encouraging comments from our users. Although we’re generally not driven by an interest in feeding the vices of our users, the words ‘addicting’ and ‘addictive’ have been used more than ever in the way that we’ve seen our browser described since we integrated Digg and Pownce into the experience.

"Really like the Digg button. Far too addictive! You have a magnificent product."

Go nuts! We love it too! Now that we’ve really got things cooking for you, we’re ready to offer a peek into our next round of progress. Within the coming weeks Flock will release it’s first beta of Flock 2.0, which incorporates the Mozilla technology that powers Firefox 3. So get ready to have all of the latest performance (memory management), security and feature enhancements found in the latest Firefox 3 release along with the unique user experience innovations only delivered by the Flock browser.

If you’re finding yourselves addicted now, then we’ll be anxious to hear from you when you have the features you love, running on the latest Mozilla technology we’re all raving about.
As always, if you’ve become a convert to the Flock browser, please tell a friend to check us out and…Digg us!

-Cheers

Dan Burkhart
Vice President, Marketing
dan at flock dot com

We recently became aware that Flock was selected as one of PC World's top 100 products of 2008. This is flattering for us, and another great validation that our vision is resonating with the world. We were not only in the company of many wonderful other products and services, but we were listed as #6 on the list of 100 services.

Rather than doing some kind of chicken dance to show our jubilation for this acknowledgement, I'll simply point you to the list so that you can check out the many wonderful companies which also received this recognition.  Of course, we pay close attention to the other browsers, and we are extremely humbled to be listed as the top browser by PC World.

The pace of progress here at Flock has been steady. In November of 2007, Flock launched our first commercial release with the 1.0 version of our browser. Today, we find ourselves almost half way into 2008, and we're launching our third full commercial release with the 1.2 version of our browser.

We've got some great things planned for the remainder of 2008, and look forward to continued innovation in pursuit of delighting Flock fans worldwide.

As I'm sure you've noticed, the developers here at Flock are not ones to stand still very long. We're proud to announce that today, Flock's 1.2 public beta release is available on our site. With this latest release, Flock has integrated Digg, Pownce and AOL Mail into the browser, making it easier than ever for Flock users to stay connected with their friends and favorite services on the Web.

Let me start with Digg. What's not to love about Digg? They pioneered the whole category of social news and have done an incredible job of making news entertaining and engaging for everyone. Fortunately for all of us, the folks at Digg have made news consumption cool for an entire generation of people. We like what they've done so much that we made sure you can take Digg with you wherever you are on the Web by using Flock. Flock's People sidebar plugs right into Digg so that you can always check out the stories that your friends have Dugg and easily share with them from anywhere on the web. You can also post your discoveries to Digg easily by using your sidebar or the Diggman icon next to the address bar in Flock. We're all really excited about the Digg integration and look forward to hearing your comments.

But that's not all! We've also integrated Pownce into this beta release. Pownce is a service that "allows you to send stuff to your friends," such as music, photos, videos, messages and links. Pownce is another highly useful service which appears as a 'People' service in Flock. Pownce and Flock fit very nicely together, because we share the belief that connecting and sharing with your friends keeps things much more interesting. We're very happy about the addition of Pownce and hope that you enjoy their service as much as we do.

Rounding out this release, we've also added AOL Mail to Flock's existing webmail options.

We couldn't be happier about the continuing evolution of newly added services into the Flock experience and honestly couldn't have asked for a nicer group of folks to work with across the board.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this latest beta release. Please send us your thoughts and comments to our feedback page.

Cheers and Enjoy!

-Dan Burkhart

VP of Marketing

dan at flock dot com

Wow. We honestly didn't prepare a speech for this event...

A few weeks back, Flock was humbled to have been nominated amongst such esteemed heavyweights as Facebook, Bebo, Ning and ChangeEverything.ca for the annual Webby Awards in the Social Networking category. Late last night, we were alerted that Flock won the Webby Award for this incredibly competitive category. For a 40 person company, filled with passionate individuals who have been working late nights and straight through weekends, this is a very pleasant, unexpected, and flattering surprise!

This year marked the 12th annual Webby Awards ceremony. They received over 10,000 nominations from 60+ countries worldwide. The Webbys have long been recognized as a very special acknowledgement of the companies that are leading in key areas of excellence and innovation. Past Webby Award winners have included: Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo!, iTunes, Google, NPR, Salon Magazine, Evite, Meetup, Wikipedia, Flickr, PBS, and The Onion.

We are delighted about receiving this prestigious award, and would also like to congratulate Facebook for winning the People's Voice award within the same category. We're very close with the good folks over at Facebook and always appreciate what good partners they have been to Flock.

As always, we continue to be grateful to the millions of users around the world who have downloaded Flock, and to those that continue to champion Flock as a fun, fresh and innovative alternative to conventional browsers.

Thanks to the Judges of the Webby Awards, as well as our own Community of Flockstars for making the first third of 2008 a wild success.

-Cheers!

Dan Burkhart

Vice President, Marketing

dan at flock dot com