Since the launch of Flock’s v1 product, we’ve taken great pride in receiving positive notes from our community about how Flock has “changed the way that [they] experience the Web”. Flock provides the technology, and people bring their widely varied interests and add their friends to the mix to create an experience that is entirely tailored to suit their needs.

We’ve recently embarked on an exciting project to create some new “editions” of Flock, which will appeal to people that share strong passions for particular causes and topics. We are launching our maiden “edition” today: the “Eco-Edition” of the Flock browser, which delivers the best environmentally conscious “green” content and media available from around the web in a tightly organized format, all available from a single download. Once the browser installs, it updates with fresh eco-content daily in the form of news feeds, media streams, and favorite sites, delivering an experience that is dynamic, connected and always fresh.  We’ve included an extensive offering of content topics, and fully expect people to prune and further refine the experience to better serve their own preferences once they’ve gotten acquainted with Flock.

Flock provides a unique platform for browser-based content programming -- users bring their passion for topics of interest. With the “Eco-Edition”, environmental information ranges from “alternative energy” to “climate news” to “green design + architecture” to “green cuisine”. Creating awareness is the best way to effect change, and we’re glad to help by donating 10% of proceeds from the Eco-Edition to an environmental charity, as determined by all the users of the Eco-Edition at the end of 2008.

We’re hitting record growth numbers for new downloads and users every week, and have been thrilled by the many vocal advocates of Flock. We are targeting Flock’s next product release, v1.2, for launch in May and have some exciting new services integrated which we know you’re going to enjoy, because your requests guide our feature prioritization.

We will also release new editions for other passionate audiences over the months to come. We hope these editions will introduce Flock’s unique capabilities to new audiences that will be delighted by what they discover in Flock and join the global community of raving Flock fans.

We’re excited to see what happens when we mix Flock, People and Passion together. And we’re thrilled to kick off this new program with the “Eco-Edition”.

As always, we are very much looking forward to your input and feedback.

It is my sincere pleasure to announce the release of Flock version 1.0. The Social Web Browser is now available to download from www.flock.com. This event marks a significant milestone for our company. When I arrived at Flock one year ago, the primary goal I set for the company was to transform us from a great idea company into a world-class innovation and execution company. Since that time, the tremendous work from all across Flock’s expanding organization has demonstrated this team’s appetite and capability to do exactly that: we upgraded the underlying technology platform for Flock with version 0.8 in Q1 of this year, we enhanced significantly the dependability, discoverability and feature integration with version 0.9 in Q2, we released over two hundred bug fixes and feature enhancements with version 0.9.1 in Q3, and today we are launching the full release of Flock 1.0, with the integration of “people in the browser”, available as a free download for Mac, PC and Linux.

The 1.0 Social Web Browser incorporates all your friends across numerous popular social services (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter). We hear from our 1.0 beta users every day that this product has changed the way they are engaging with and experiencing the Web. The most frequently used adjective describing this version of Flock is ‘addictive’. We take that as a real compliment, and a strong vote that Flock is onto something very special.
 
Flock 1.0 is also a platform, and you will see an expansion of the social and media services with which Flock is integrated early in the New Year, along with the formal release of our 1.0 API for developers and third parties around the world to leverage, add services and further contribute to Flock’s capabilities.

With your help, and the millions of new users we plan to serve in the year ahead, we will continue to be champions of open-standards, and strive to continually deliver unique and meaningful experiences that place the user at the center of everything, and are made possible only from within the browser.
 
We’re incredibly excited by the launch of Flock 1.0. The Flock team is both grateful and enormously proud of the overwhelmingly positive response to our 1.0 release, and I want to personally thank all of the passionate community members and Flock users who have emailed enthusiastic notes of encouragement. Your tremendous feedback fuels our desire to push the boundaries of browser innovation. We have great ambitions to continually improve and evolve Flock, and hope that we can continue to count on your passionate engagement to help us guide our course.

I welcome your comments and feedback – either here or via email (shawn at flock.com).

Thanks,

Shawn

Blogged with Flock

Previously under wraps for TechCrunch40, we are now able to show you a preview of this exciting next stage of our product.  You can read our Press Release about the unveiling of Flock 1.0 at TechCrunch40 here.
Want to get your hands on it?  Visit www.flock.com/privatebeta to get a sneak peek of the new features and sign up for a private beta that we will be launching in the coming weeks.  Be one of the first to see and test drive the revolutionary next step of Flock!

Shawn

Blogged with Flock

It is my great pleasure to announce that Flock has been selected as one of the 40 hottest startup companies by TechCrunch40 (out of over 700, from more than 26 countries around the world).  The event is being held today and tomorrow in San Francisco and Flock will be in attendance to do our first public demonstration of Flock 1.0, The Social Web Browser.

Check back later today, when we will have lots of additional information to share with you...

Shawn

Blogged with Flock

I’m pleased to announce the release of Flock 0.9.1 less than 70 days after the launch of 0.9. Today's upgrade to Flock includes over two hundred bug fixes and feature enhancements. While many of these fixes and enhancements were derived from our internal QA process, many also were brought to our attention by our early 0.9 test drivers. Thank you all for your invaluable contribution in making Flock better and better!

This release is a prime example of the speed at which Flock is now developing, innovating, building, and shipping. These enhancements will further strengthen the foundation for our v1.0 release, scheduled for release later this fall.

While the complete list of improvements to Flock 0.9.1 is too large to list here, here is a highlight of key enhancements:

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback – either here or via email (shawn at flock.com).

Thanks,

Shawn

Blogged with Flock

I announced today the addition of an experienced rock-star to the executive team at Flock: Dan Burkhart, who will lead Marketing.  Dan's expertise in consumer Internet marketing and management is an excellent complement to the dynamite team already assembled. As we head into the launch of our 1.0 social browser this fall, Dan joins the team at just the right time to lead our official consumer launch of Flock.  Please join me in welcoming Dan to the Flock.

Blogged with Flock

It was wonderful to receive such a great response to our recent, major upgrade to Flock. It takes talented, incredibly smart people to make great products and to create a game-changing platform like Flock’s. Flock has continued to invest in building a world-class team and has hired some of the sharpest professionals available, and today I want to introduce some of our newest staff members.
 
David Westendorf recently joined the Flock executive team as Vice President of Business Development & Partnerships. David is a consumer behavior nut with over 17 years in marketing and business development, and comes to us from Kodak, where he ran the worldwide partnerships group for Kodak Gallery. David will help us to distribute Flock far and wide, and align ourselves with more innovative and dynamic companies who can help us spread the word.
 
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Clayton Stark is now Vice President of Engineering at Flock. Previously Clayton was Chief Operating Officer of Mercurial Communications, Inc. where he directed the development of the Netscape 8.x browsers for AOL. Clayton brings highly specialized experience to this pivotal role and has boundless passion to build the world’s first and only social web browser.

Building Flock is decidedly a team sport and I want to welcome the amazing players who have joined the company over the last few month. These team members each bring a wealth of energy, ideas and professional experience to their essential positions at Flock.

Here are the newest members of our expanding team:

Brij, Software Engineer
Bruno, Sr. Software Engineer
Bryan, Jr. Product Manager
Garrett, QA Engineer
Joshua, User Support Intern
Justin, Sr. Software Engineer
Len, Director, Office of Project Management
Leon, Team Lead, Engineering Services
Matthew, Sr. Software Engineer
Ryan, Sr. Software Engineer
Tim, Lead Designer

We’re growing fast and the pace of development is increasing each week. I look forward to sharing more exciting news – made possible by this tremendous team – in the weeks and months ahead.
 
As always, I welcome your comments and feedback – either here or via email (shawn at flock.com).
 
Thanks,
 
Shawn

Blogged with Flock

We've recovered from a great launch week and are elated by the incredibly positive response to Flock 0.9. 

Here's a sample of what people are saying:

Starting now, you can download the latest Flock browser, Flock 0.9, on our website at http://www.flock.com. We are thrilled to release this major upgrade from Flock 0.7 (click here for a comparison chart) and to move significantly closer to our 1.0 release, which is scheduled for launch later this fall. In support of 0.9, we have also launched today a major overhaul of our website www.flock.com.

Key Flock 0.9 enhancements include the following:

• MyWorld: a dynamic home base for all your favorite sites, feeds, and media streams
• Flock's Media MiniBar provides fast access to both photos and videos on Flickr, Photobucket, Youtube, and Truveo.
• The new Accounts & Services sidebar offers easier configuration and enhanced discovery and activation logic
• Improved Favorites with folders and support for Ma.gnolia and del.icio.us
• Blogging: Improved UI, integrated Clipboard, support for all major Blog services including Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad and Livejournal
• Security improvements
• In-line spell check
• Overall Theme upgrade

We're excited to bring you Flock 0.9, and we're already working hard to deliver 1.0 on schedule this fall. As always, I welcome your comments and feedback­ either here or via email (shawn at flock.com).

Thanks,

Shawn

I am writing to share some exciting Flock news. We are in final QA testing for our upcoming 0.9 beta release, have lots of momentum and continue to invest in growing Flock’s capabilities and talent base.

As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, 2007 is all about enhancing Flock’s ability to execute our plans and ship enhanced versions of our product. Towards that end, I’m pleased to announce the promotion of Clayton Stark to the new role of Vice President of Engineering at Flock. Clayton has the proven skills and specialized experience to help Flock continue to execute, and we're excited to welcome him to this pivotal new role at the company.