Remember when we told you that your MySpace web browser is coming? Well today it has officially arrived. In the new version of the social browser Flock, they’ve finally integrated their number one most-requested feature: support for MySpace. Additionally, the Flock 2.0 upgrade includes support for Media RSS, a technology which delivers real-time image and video streams in a standardized format. With this feature, Flock can support any web service as long as they offer a Media RSS feed.
The official release of Flock 2.0 comes on the heels of three prior betas in which Flock was upgraded to use the Firefox 3.0 codebase and the Media RSS feature was originally introduced, though quietly. The company did not promote the feature at that time, so only beta testers were aware of its existence. The MySpace integration, however, is new as of today.
MySpace At Last! (Or Too Late?)
With MySpace now included as one of Flock’s supported services, relevant actions like friending others or updating your status are now available from the sidebar as they are with Facebook and the other social services Flock supports like Digg, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, and Twitter. And with Flock’s Media Bar feature (the image and video bar at the top of the browser window), you can now easily drag and drop both pictures and videos into the comment form on a MySpace user’s profile.
Although Flock has cited MySpace integration as their most requested feature, there seems to have been a delay in bringing it to launch (it was originally announced in February). Over the course of the year, Facebook has been busy catching up to MySpace in terms of popularity, so the pent-up demand for MySpace integration in Flock may not be as heavy as it was before. That being said, having MySpace support does finally round out Flock as the social browser it aims to be.
Media RSS Means Support For More Services
Although beta testers have had the Media RSS feature since last month, Flock 2.0 introduces the first version of the browser to officially support the technology. With Media RSS, you can receive automatic and up-to-the-minute image and video feeds added to both the Media Bar as well as into your “My World” page just by favoriting a feed. Currently, some big names that support this functionality include LeMonde.fr, MSNBC, Revision3, WordPress, SmugMug, TinyPic, and blip.TV.
Media RSS in Flock:
More Extensions And Themes
Another issue that some have had with Flock is what they perceive to be the “pain of switching.” Given so many people’s reliance on Firefox extensions as part of the browsing experience, there is some fear that not everything will work as it should when moving to Flock. Some of those fears may be unfounded though. In addition to Flock’s own extensions, the browser also supports the majority of Firefox’s extensions, too, including those “can’t live without ’em” add-ons like Greasemonkey..
Another pain point for those in transition between Firefox and Flock is, or rather, was the lack of themes for the browser. Although some like Flock’s blue and grey theme, the lack of choice was aggravating for people who like to customize their browser’s look-and-feel. It seemed the only way to get new themes was via special Flock installs like the Earth Day browser whose theme featured green grass or Flock Gloss, a pink-colored version aimed at fashionistas.
But now Flock is debuting a new themes section which will offer a selection of themes to choose from and will soon be updated with even more. This might not be that interesting to you, but something as simple as being able to change the Flock UI may be all some people need to make the transition from Firefox.
New Flock Themes At Last!
Flock Adoption Still Niche
Given our current obsession with social media, not to mention the issues of fatigue, burnout, and noise, you would think that a Firefox-based web browser like Flock would have seen greater adoption among social media fans. Yet the numbers for Flock are still dwarfed by Firefox. Flock has seen 6 million downloads in total (3.8 million since its 1.0 release), but Firefox is killing them with well over 500 million downloads. It’s possible that without MySpace support, Flock’s would-be fans simply saw the browser as incomplete. We wonder if that will change now.
Will you consider switching to Flock now that 2.0 is out? Let us know why or why not in the comments.
