ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez has an intriguing blog post about Flock, and how it has failed to capture the imagination of Web users despite teeming with social media goodness.
On paper, Flock seems like it should be the browser of our dreams. All our favorite social media addictions wrapped up into one shiny package. It’s built on top of the Firefox code base, too, allowing our Firefox add-ons to work in Flock – a feature that should make the transition from one browser to the next that much easier.
So what’s wrong with Flock? Where are all the users?
Here are my reasons on why Flock has dived while Firefox has thrived:
1. Flock launched prematurely with enormous hype that it was the new browser to knock off Internet Explorer. Sadly, the alpha should have been launched to friends and family as opposed to the world.
2. As Sarah notes, Flock has tried to be all things to all people. It looks and feels like a developer’s dream with all kinds of bells and whistles. Unfortunately, users like simplicity and ease of use. Where Firefox has done so well is offering simplicity AND the option to pimp the browser with a never-ending stream of add-ons.
3. As much as Flock is piggybacking on Mozilla, it’s also piggybacking on Firefox by embracing many of the same approaches such as add-ons
4. Flock simply failed to capture the imagination of browser users. In a world where fickleness rules, Flock has its shot at becoming super-popular but, for whatever reason, it didn’t stick.
The ironic thing about Flock is when I use it, I like it but not enough to lure me away from Firefox or Safari. I like some of the features and the UI but like many search engines trying to compete against Google, Flock just isn’t a whole lot better than the browsers already being used. At the end of the day, this might be the best explanation as to why Flock hasn’t hit it.
3 Comments
I think point number 2 is the most significant…The masses are not developers…nor do they have accounts with every social networking service. So ease of use is big.
I also think that Google is taking a page from Firefox with GMail labs….Ease of use out of the box, with the ability to extend your heart out.
I felt Flock was too focused on social media. All the bells and whistles were or ‘certain’ SM sites and anything else took a lot of effort to set up. As for regular plain old browsing and surfing the net it still didn’t beat Firefox.
Without a major makeover, I can't see Flock as a viable option anymore with Real-time now here.