Flock actually has a plan

Following the definitive Flock beta 1 review by Paul and the Flock.com redesign by Bryan, and considering that I haven’t actually written about Flock in so long (because I figured they might have just dissappeared), I want to give an update on my own perception of Flock and why I believe they actually have a chance to succeed. Yes, former GFY writer and once harsh critic of Flock (me) thinks Flock has a chance to succeed. This is serious.

First of all, I have to give huge props to Bryan for a great job on the new Flock website. Previous versions of the site were criticized often, and rightfully so. With previous versions it was hard to even tell that Flock was a browser, and there was no real reason stated for why people should download it. Granted, in a pre-beta state Flock didn’t need to sell itself to common users, but I imagine the lack of information on the Flock site could have pushed away potential users.

The new version of the site gets the message out right away: Flock is “The web browser for you and your friends.” It is the browser for all the users of social “web 2.0″ services. In a way this is good and bad. Flock suffers the same problem as a lot of other web 2.0 companies: the 53,651 problem. Because the whole purpose of Flock is providing a platform for all the users of web 2.0 services, they have already limited themselves to an audience that does not make up the mainstream Internet user base. What makes things even more difficult is that unlike all the top web 2.0 services that require nothing more than a login account to use, Flock actually requires users to download and switch to a new browser. It’s going to be hard to:

• Grab Internet Explorer users who are still oblivious to other browsers.
• Grab Safari or Opera or Linux-based browser users who don’t like the Mozilla codebase.
• Grab Mozilla suite (Seamonkey) users who like having Firefox and Thunderbird in one package.
• Grab Firefox users who are, like, total fanboys.

I also know that Flock will have to acheive and maintain top-notch support for a lot of blogging platforms to be successful. As of now Flock doesn’t provide all the features that many blogging platforms offer in their admin interfaces, and it is crucial that it does. Flock programmers will have a lot of work ahead of them keeping Flock up to date with these and many other services.

In the end Flock has their work cut out for them in terms of convincing everyone to download their product, and while their slick new website will help them, it won’t be nearly enough. Still, I said Flock has a chance and I’m convinced of this because it’s clear that Flock has become a great browser for Yahoo to support. Flock is integrated with all the top Yahoo! services, including search, del.icio.us, and Flickr. If Flock could get a mention from these services (something along the frontpage or admin side saying “use this service from Flock”), as well as from blogging platforms like Wordpress and Movable Type, then that would allow them to reach a good portion of the “web 2.0″ userbase. As for communties like MySpace and Xanga, I can assure the Flock team that the only way to reach them is to get a mention from their sites. MySpace and Xanga are closed communities and many of their users are completely oblivious to the rest of the web, including Digg, Yahoo!, and anywhere else that Flock could get publicity. At least with Yahoo! on Flock’s side, they are bound to do fine, but like anything else, it’s far-reaching publicity and advertising that will get it to the masses.

So the last thing for me to discuss is, will I ever use Flock? I think the answer (right now) is no. I don’t use Flickr, the del.icio.us XPI gives me enough functionality with Firefox, and I like administrating my blogs from their web interfaces. That doesn’t mean that I don’t plan to download Flock and give it another test run. It’s safe to say that everyone who tried Flock when it was first announced ought to give it another try and see what’s new.

For more information, read Introducing Flock Beta 1.