I installed Flock quite sometime back, and even used it for a few days. I was quite impressed with the social aggregation, and the sheer number of sharing sites it was tying together on a browser. Flock has recently released version 2 of the browser, though the Beta was launched back in June. The major updates are MySpace integration and Media RSS accessibility, a standard developed by Yahoo that syndicates rich content like photos and videos. (via Tech Crunch)
However, it puzzles me that I am still unable to figure out why I didn’t stick with it. Though adding all the services- from blogs to photo sharing to status updating services is a tedious exercise, it’s something I managed to do. Its load time is greater than others,but I doubt that’s the reason. After having thought about it, I figured out a few other possible reasons
- the sheer lethargy of changing the preferred browser, especially since there are a few plugins in Firefox that have made life much easier. (but i just read that most of them should work in Flock. Yes, it has the Awesome Bar too, something that has proven to be extremely useful)
- the existence of a web/ desktop client based service like Friendfeed which does a fair bit of social aggregation
- a browser plugin like Yoono which does roughly the same job as above
While I am now a fairly good user of Friendfeed, I haven’t used Yoono much. But I did read a couple of days back that Yoono has announced support for IE and is adding Imeem and MySpace. It is also adding an interesting shopping widget soon.
Anyway, as if all these weren’t enough, I also read recently about the launch of Sobees, a social desktop aggregator. Both Flock and Sobees have a very useful picture uploading feature.Its interesting the social aggregation wars being fought on several platforms – browser, desktop, browser plugin, web.
Meanwhile, there are other browsers popping up. Mac users can check out Cruz, a multi pane social browser, about which I read here. There is some work happening on Mozilla’s Minefield.
So now, i am wondering what will work for me – Flock 2.0, or the combination of Firefox and the Yoono plugin? With Chrome’s awesome speed, only one of the above alternatives will survive. Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that Chrome and FF don’t really take to each other. Invariably FF develops problems when Chrome is run simultaneously. Anyone else having the same issue?
until next time, browse