Mark Evans

The New and Improved Flock?

Just out of curiosity, I checked out the list of companies slated to appear at the TechCrunch40 conference (aka The New Demo) this week.

There are some pretty intriguing names (e.g. PowerSet, mEGO), a bunch I’ve never heard about, and one name familiar to many people: Flock.

Yup, the “social” Web browser that burst onto the scene into late-2005 with an highly-anticipated alpha that was nowhere close to being ready. The browser was savaged, forcing the company to lick its wounds and head back to the drawing board. Meanwhile, the rest of the tech world learned about the perils of coming out of the gate too soon, particularly with a product with an ambitious feature set.

In the past two years, Flock has kept a low profile. Meanwhile, Firefox has grabbed more than 10% of the browser market, IE7 has been released, Opera continues to rumble along, particularly in the wireless market, while Google bought a stake in Maxthon, a popular browser in China.

I assume Flock, which unveiled a new version of its browser (0.9.1) last week, has continued to carry on. Given the TechCrunch40 conference has only invited companies that have a new product or service to unveil, it will be interesting to see what Flock has to offer - does an upgrade count? Maybe, Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis wanted to give Flock another shot at redemption - called it Launch 2.0.

For more, check out CenterNetworks interview with Flock CEO Shawn Hardin a few months ago.

Update: Flock ended up unveiling a private beta of its latest upgrade - version 1.0. You ask why Flock was chosen to present given it was supposed to be new services and products. Then again, Deep Jive Interests (via Allen Stern) notes the selection criteria was pretty flexible given MC Hammer was invited to present and be an expert. It turns out Mike Arrington is one of the investors in Hammer’s DanceJam’s start-up.