A Personalized/Customized Browser
For whatever reason, I’m fascinated with Flock.
Perhaps it has to do with the tremendous amount of hype Flock received before launching a couple of years ago. Its unveiling was a disaster with an alpha that should probably never have seen the light of day. For all intents and purposes, Flock should have been dead in the water.
Rather than fade away, Flock kept on moving forward by introducing an array of new features and raising another $15-million of venture capital. In a sense, it has evolved from being the “social browser” to the “Swiss Army” browser given you can do pretty much everything and anything.
Yet, Flock has never really resonated with the digerati. It’s a browser many people have downloaded but rarely use. In fact, I’ve never come across anyone who has proclaimed themselves to a loyal Flock user.
So, Flock keeps on the searching for the magic bullet to jump-start its fortunes. It’s still early days but Flock may have stumbled upon something interesting - customized versions for different market segments. Earlier this week, Flock unveiled a new version called Gloss for the fashion and entertainment sectors. It also has Eco-Green and German versions.
Given people are so attached to their browsers, maybe the concept of a personalized browser will capture peoples’ attention. After all, you can customize Firefox by using add-ons and bookmarks so why shouldn’t people gravitate to browsers feature pre-configured content and a stylized look and feel.
You have to give Flock credit for trying to find its niche in an extremely competitive market. Whether or not this strategy is going to work is left to be seen but it looks like an interesting step in the right direction.
Technorati Tags: Flock
July 25th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Customizing browser for different segments is very good thought. It’s strange that while popular browser support skinning - this function is very unused and browser developers hardly mention and advertise that.
People like eye-candy, they can redo their OS intterface because they know about apps for that… But they can sit with default browser theme at the same time because they don’t know it can be easily changed.
July 25th, 2008 at 11:10 am
As an ad seller, anything skinnable and customizable is pure gold, especially if it has reach and a wow/kewl factor.
July 25th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Great site…..glad to see a fellow canuck pimpin out the tech game.
Check us out…. http://thedrunkcanuck.com for some Canadian humor and content when you need a break from the tech game.
July 28th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
I love Flock, especially the new beta 2, it leaves Firefox for dead.
The biggest mistake they ever made however was marketing Flock as the browser for ’social media addicts’ which they have been dropping in more recent times.
People don’t really want to describe or think of themselves in that way, or even know what it means. Like all the teeny bopper girls I know who will sit on Myspace ALL day, but wouldnt have a clue what social media is.
Anyway the point was Flock is just a great browser with tons of features that would take hundreds of addons, plus you can additionally use any normal Firefox extensions.
It’s a winner!