OK. Help me out here, I don’t get Flock.
So, it’s social bookmarking w/ del.icio.us, blogging with your favorite blogging program, pictures courtesy of Flickr, and searching of your search/page view history. But, how’s that better than what I already do with Firefox? I have the del.icio.us plugin for Firefox, I have a bookmark synchronizer, and I can live bookmark Flickr feeds if I wanted too (but I use NetNewsWire). So, what am I missing?
I’m just not drinking the kool-aide on this one. I don’t get this experience thing and I don’t get the business model. How can a group of roughly a dozen individuals support a business model with this free application? Will they have to go the route Opera did with an ad supported free version? I know that’s why I stopped using it.
Baffled. That’s really what I am. I know the biggest buzz word on the Web is “Web 2.0”, OK two words, but I don’t see this improving my experience. I find the Flickr integration useless at best and the blogging features I can do without. But, I must admit that the bookmarking features are cool with del.icio.us. However, give some developer some time and I bet my Firefox can up through the same hoop that Flock currently does.
Maybe I’m really just missing the point here. Or, maybe I’m so set in my ways that Flock can’t change the way I do things online. I think that it really is a combination of both.
But, what really rubs me wrong is reading blogs and reviews on how this is going to revolutionize web browsing and that Flock is the best thing for the internet since TCP/IP. Woah Woah Woah there. Slow, down. Let’s talk stats. Firefox usage is at best 10%. So, let’s assume you get a slice of that pie, but how big of a slice is it? I doubt it’s large.
I know I’m really dogging Flock here, but I don’t see anything that just blows me away. Nothing that you can’t integrate yourself with a couple plugins to plain old Firefox. I think the hype ended up letting me down… hard.
Overall, I think I’m just lost on the feature set. I don’t care to search my history, or blog from my browser (I use SubEthaEdit for that), or browsing Flickr from a filmstrip in my browser (um, use flickr.com?). I think that sharing bookmarks and all is pretty neat, but it’s not for everybody. I would never think of sharing any bookmarks on my work computer or even some that I house on my personal computers. I think that del.icio.us isn’t close to mainstream with the vast majority of users, nor will it be. If you don’t believe me, look at the popular links and you’ll notice that the majority are Web 2.0, AJAX, standards related.
I guess I need to give it time and hope that it can prove me wrong when it is an official release. But, I just see this as something like Firefox++ just a little extra kick to your browsing experience. Too bad I already enjoy my experience and Flock actually detracts from it for me. Guess that’s why I’m not a part of the Flock.