Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Flock

Flock Browser Shutting Down On April 26

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:03:43 +0000

Back in January 2011, Zynga hired the team behind the Flock social browser for the talent. On April 26th, support for the Flock browser will end. Flock started off on the Mozilla platform, but ended up switching over to Chromium. At its peak, Flock had about 10 million users. Below is the message that Flock is sharing with their users:

“Support for Flock browsers will be discontinued as of April 26th, 2011. We would like to thank our loyal users around the world for their support, and we encourage the Flock community to migrate in the coming weeks to one of the recommended web browsers listed below.

Our Recommendations

Since no further security updates will be provided to keep you safe on the web, we encourage all Flock users to upgrade to one of the two browsers listed below. Both are based on the same reliable technologies as Flock, and both are being actively maintained and improved. Also, each of the following browsers has a broad selection of add-ons and extensions to customize and extend their capabilities.”

[TechCrunch]

Zynga Acquires Flock For The Talent Behind The Product

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:21:57 +0000

Social gaming company Zynga has acquired Flock, the web browser built around social networks. Word on the streets is that Zynga was most interested in the team behind Flock. Flock was founded by Bart Decrem and Geoffrey Arone. Ever since Flock started in 2005, they raised $30 million in funding. Flock’s last round of funding was in 2008. Google and Twitter were also involved in the bidding process for Flock.

Recently Flock switched from Mozilla to Chromium as their core programming platform. The problem is that not a lot of people used Flock. Below is a note from Flock’s blog:

I’m very excited to announce that the Flock team will be joining the social gaming phenomenon, Zynga.

This month marked Flock’s six-year anniversary and, from the beginning, we’ve always believed in the transformative power of social. We knew that it would change everything we do online, so we worked hard to make it easier and more rewarding for you to discover, enjoy and share the relationships and content you’re passionate about. And so, it is incredibly exciting and rewarding for us to take our expertise and passion for great products to one of the hottest and most innovative companies in the world.

With over a quarter of a billion users, Zynga has captured the imagination of the world. Their dedication to understanding what social game users want and to delivering a wildly popular gaming platform is already legendary. And, they’ve only just gotten started…

Our team will help Zynga in achieving their goal of building the most fun, social games available to anyone, anytime – on any platform.

Flock’s dedication to its products and users allowed us to achieve over 10 million users around the world with two products on the Facebook top 10 list of the most popular desktop apps. We thank our users for their unwavering support and dedication, and we’re thrilled to be going to a platform that shares our passion for combining great user experience and technology. What an awesome way to kick off 2011!

Best wishes for a Happy New Year,

Shawn Hardin

[Flock Blog]

Social Media Browser Flock Does Battle With RockMelt With New Version

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 07:55:09 +0000

Flock is a social media browser that is facing some competition with a new browser called RockMelt. Flock has intensified their competition with RockMelt by increasing the speed of their browser and enhancing its functionality in version 3.5. Flock 3.5′s sidebar has Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn integration and there are link-sharing features built-in.

The new version of Flock also lets you group friends across different services and there is a “Social Search” that lets you find out what your friends are saying about the keywords you enter. Flock is now upgraded from Chromium 5 by building the browser off of Chromium 7. Flock’s Mac browser is now built on Chromium, making it faster than before. The last Flock Mac browser version was built on Gecko.

[Mashable]

Flock Brings In $15 Million To Enhance Social Network Browsing

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:17:11 +0000

“We are thrilled to close this significant round of financing,” stated Shawn Hardin, CEO of Flock. “Following the tremendous market response to Flockâ€™s commercial release, this new funding will enable us to continue our browser innovation â€“ making engagement and participation across social networks and the Web as effortless as consumption.”

Flock is an open source social networking browser built around other open source layout engines.Â Flock was created using Javascript, DOM, XUL, and XPCOM.Â Yesterday Flock announced that they have raised $15 million in Series D funding.Â The funding was provided by Fidelity Ventures, Bessemer Ventures, Catamount Ventures, and Shasta Ventures.Â

With the new round of funding, Flock plans to expand business for R&D, marketing, and expansion.Â Flock stated that this round of funding was higher than prior investments and that revenue has risen 400% since Jan. 2008.Â And Flock’s user base increased by 250% since Jan. 2008.

Information Source:
[1] Flock Press Release