After months of struggling with annoying UIs, massive memory use, finding bugs, reporting bugs, finding the same bugs again in the next release, etc, etc, I've finally given up on Flock and gone back to Firefox. It suddenly dawned on me that, as "UN-BE-LIEVABLE" as Flock is, it doesn't really offer me anything that I can't get better or easier somewhere else. Cases in point-
Feed reader: Sure Flock's feed reader is quite good, but so are the "Wizz" and "Sage" Firefox extensions. In fact, I've been experimenting with Google Reader and finding it great (and less resource consuming than an extension), keyboard shortcuts, iGoogle gadget and all.
Digg: Digg any page instantly? Use Ubiquity (same goes for Twitter). See the top 5 Digg stories? Use the iGoogle gadget.
Media streams: Does anyone actually use these? Do they actually save anyone time over, say, making subscriptions on Youtube and then checking them every once in a while?
Facebook: Since the People sidebar only notifies me of about half the things that can happen in Facebook, I STILL have to check it regularly... so why have the People sidebar at all?
Social bookmarking: I'm not arrogant enough to believe that anyone on the Internet actually cares what I bookmark. Since I'm the only one who cares about my bookmarks, why not just keep them local to me (and back them up manually or using Weave or Foxmarks if I'm concerned about losing them).
Blogging and photo uploading: Ugh. I'll take web interfaces over Flock's horrible versions any day.
Mail checking: The "Gmail Notifier" extension does the same thing, plus it actually lets me check multiple accounts simultaneously.
OK, I'll admit, maybe there are people out there thoroughly into the whole Web 2.0 thing, who share their bookmarks with hundreds of adoring fans, who subscribe to multiple Flickr feeds, who treasure the instant updates from their multitude of friends on a multitude of social networking sites and who Tweet their every belch and fart. I'm also willing to bet there aren't many of them, and that 95% of them are a) jerks and b) live in California working for smug, hip companies like Flock.
So sorry Flock, but you ain't for me.
Your Name
its like what ppl have been saying on http://www.flock.com/node/63361
'Lately I've been wondering why I use a browser that is based on Firefox when I could actually be using Firefox'
'I never use the people and social sidebars, or media bar, or web clipboard... never. I thought they were cool and would be useful to me when I made the switch to Flock from Firefox, but I've just found they're...not.'
ChrisVance
Is there a killer feature that would make you use one browser instead of another?
Everyone uses different services, and I think Flock tries to pick popular services that both appeal to existing users as well as draw in new folks. If/When Flock introduces the MySpace support they've indicated they're working on, I bet Flock will gain some additional users.
I use Flock's RSS reader, Facebook integration, and image uploading utilities, and only use Flock/read these specific RSS feeds from a single computer. These services integrate well with my workflow. While I do have my Gmail account integrated, I have Firefox open with Gmail at the same time as I'm using Flock, so I don't gain anything from this specific feature. Services like Xanga and Piczo? Not on my radar.
There are a ton of browsers out there; pick the one(s) that works for your needs. Best of luck.