Flock is now available for developer download– thanks to John for picking this up.  There are a lot of rough edges and bugs but it definitely has potential.  I’ll try to look past some of these flaws and consider the Platonic ideal of what Flock might become given great execution.

The part I’m most excited about is that they’ve integrated blog authoring into the browsing experience. Every blog post is an assemblage of quotes, links, and images from different and Flock has shelves and toolbars that make assembly much easier. The ideal Flock may never as be as fully featured as standalone editors like Rocketpost, but the deep integration with the browser could make up for this.  (Rocketpost crashed when I tried to post to my blog, and costs $150, so I don’t think I’m going there.)

Below is a collection of excepts regarding Flock’s blogging features from 13 things you can do from Flock, collected using the Shelf.

With Flock, blogging is a fully integrated part of the Web. Flock includes a blog editor that works with WordPress, Movable Type and Typepad (and shortly also Live Journal) and Blogger… The Shelf is a scrapbook for interesting web content that you want to blog about later… With
Flock, blogging Flickr pictures is easy. You can drag and drop pictures
from our integrated Flickr topbar right into your blog post… You can easily blog interesting web content with Flock, in just a few clicks.

One thing that would incredibly cool is something like the Wordpress “Edit” link which is displayed next to my posts could invoke the Flock editor instead of the wordpress page.   Given their deep  integration with the browser, Flock could make something like this work.

The other features that leap out at me are favorites that live in the cloud, built in del.icio.us tagging, and full text search integrated with favorites. There are Firefox extensions that offer similar functionality, but if these features are deeply integrated into the browser I believe they can be more compelling.

Flock comes with the open source Clucene search engine built in. Each time you visit a web page, it indexes all the content on that page so you can easily retrace your steps later.. Pages you’ve starred as Favorites float to the top when you do a History Search… Integrated Del.icio.usTagging… Flock favorites are stored online, and they’re shared, searchable, and tagged. Simply click the Star in the URL bar and you’ve flagged a page.

I wish Flock great success, though several people I’ve spoken with express some concerns regarding Flock’s business case.  Is keeping the lights on in the style of Opera enough to continue to attract the interest of VCs and top notch talent, or will Flock become a pure open source project in the style of or merged with Mozilla Foundation?  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.)

..what’s changed over the past few years is that online referral- and search-related business models have matured dramatically and in fact power big chunks of the Internet.  Huge businesses (like AOL Search) and thousands of niche online ventures alike are built around Google and Yahoo’s adword programs.  These same business models are now providing the financial footing for web browsers.  Opera’s CEO recently explained that his company was able to release the browser for free thanks to an expanded search sponsorship arrangement with Google.  The Mozilla Foundation has alluded to search related business arrangements and has created a for-profit subsidiary.  These success stories show that even simple search “distributionâ€? integration points in the browser can provide a solid financial footing for browser providers, and do so in a way that enhances the user experience (remember, the search box was added to Firefox because users needed a faster way to search online).  In sum, we’re quite comfortable that, if enough users choose our browser, we can keep the lights on here at Flock without violating user’s privacy or compromising the user experience. 

Gratuitious Photo Section

For no particular reason, and because Flock makes it easy, here are a few shots from last years Jobster Halloween party, which I dragged from the Flock toolbar.