Skip to main content

Social Browser Flock Gains Users, Turns 1.1

Version 1.1 of the “social Web browser” Flock has been released, adding new features that enable users to tap into social networking sites and services directly from their browser, rather than having to laboriously log into services and access things individually. Flock 1.1 enables users to monitor friends’ activity on supported social networks, access GMail and Yahoo Web-based email, and integrates support for the Picassa photo sharing service, enabling users to upload up to 1,00 images to Picassa using the Flock uploader.

The new features complement support for services like YouTube, Photobucket, Flickr, and Facebook that appeared in the 1.0 release.

Flock is available for free for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux users. The browser is based on the Mozilla rendering engine (the same used by Firefox) and went through a long beta gestation period were it added features and tried to bring social media and application off of Web pages and truly integrate them into a Web browser.

Flock claims to be gaining significant numbers of users, boasting that since the introduction of its 1.0 version, the browser has been downloaded nearly 3 million times and over 70 percent of those users have made it their default Web browser. Flock says that in January and February of 2008, the number of active Flock users has grown by 135 percent, with daily downloads in February totaling more than three times those in January.

“The broad majority of our growth has been generated by way of recommendation,” said Flock CEO Shawn Hardin, in a statement. “Our users tell us that Flock is a whole new way to experience the web, and they find it addictive.”

Editors' Recommendations

Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
Google says Chrome is now 20% faster on Macs
A MacBook with Google Chrome loaded.

If you feel like Google Chrome is running faster on your Mac, then you're not mistaken. Google recently shared some new statistics behind the web browser, and is claiming that Chrome is now 20% faster on Macs based on the Speedometer benchmark testing.

According to Google's data, Chrome on Mac hit over 360 on Speedometer testing. That comes just three months after the browser became the highest scoring browser on Speedometer, ever with a score of 300. For reference, Goggle tested Chrome on the M1 Max MacBook Pro running macOS 12.3.1, with Chrome version 104.0.5102.0. The browser was the ARM64 native optimized version. The below graph shows the differences between older and newer Chrome versions in scoring, where higher scores are better.

Read more
I’m a die-hard Windows fan, but the M1 Mac Mini converted me
Apple Mac Mini M1 sitting on a desk.

I am not going to lie. I am a die-hard Windows fan. I love my Surface Laptop Studio, and I'm tuned in to every new update to Windows 11. It's not that I don't dip out of the Microsoft ecosystem from time to time, but I always find myself drawn back to its familiar embrace.

But then, the M1 Mac Mini came around. I sold my own old MacBook Pro and "traded up" to the M1 Mac Mini, eager to test out the latest hardware for myself. As much as it feels like heresy to say, this little machine has made me a believer after just two months.
The performance is amazing

Read more
DuckDuckGo’s beta browser for MacOS puts privacy first
The DuckDuckGo Web Browser on MacOS

DuckDuckGo is entering the browser space on MacOS and, soon, Windows.

Just announced is the beta launch of a privacy-first web browser on MacOS, based on the same rendering engine as Safari, but with additional blockers and performance improvements.

Read more