A VC-funded 'social browser' that raised $30M, Flock first forked Firefox then switched to Chromium. Zynga acqui-hired the team in 2011, killing the browser. The social features it pioneered were eventually built into every browser.
Flock was initially based on Mozilla Firefox's Gecko rendering engine, then migrated to Google's Chromium/WebKit platform. The browser integrated with social network APIs including Facebook Connect, Twitter API, and Flickr API, requiring constant maintenance as these APIs evolved.
Flock was the browser that was going to bring Web 2.0 directly into your browser chrome — literally. Co-founded by Bart Decrem and Geoffrey Arone in 2005, Flock raised nearly $30 million in venture capital on the promise of deeply integrating social networking services into the browsing experience.
Built on the Firefox/Gecko engine, Flock shipped with built-in support for Flickr, del.icio.us, Blogger, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube. It featured a 'people sidebar' showing friends' activity, a media bar for browsing photos, and a blog editor for posting directly from the browser. In 2005, this felt revolutionary.
But Flock's timing was both its advantage and its curse. By the time the browser reached maturity, the social networks it integrated with were changing their APIs constantly, creating an endless maintenance treadmill. In a fateful decision in 2009, Flock abandoned Firefox/Gecko entirely and rebuilt on Chromium/WebKit, effectively forking a second upstream project. Version 3.0, released in 2010, was the first Chromium-based Flock.
The switch to Chromium wasn't enough to save it. By 2011, the writing was on the wall: Facebook and Twitter had become so dominant that they didn't need a special browser, and their own websites (and later mobile apps) provided the social experience users wanted. Browser extensions could replicate most of Flock's features without requiring a separate browser.
In January 2011, Zynga acquired the Flock team — but not the browser or the company. It was a pure acqui-hire, and on April 26, 2011, Flock's browser was officially discontinued. The $30 million in VC funding produced a browser that lasted six years and was used by a negligible fraction of the market.
Flock's failure illustrates the danger of building a product that's a layer on top of rapidly changing third-party services. When those services change, your product breaks. And when those services become ubiquitous, your product becomes unnecessary.
Flock browser launched, based on Firefox/Gecko
Flock 1.0 released with integrated social features
Flock announces switch from Firefox to Chromium
Flock 3.0 released as Chromium-based browser
Zynga acqui-hires the Flock team; browser not included
Flock browser officially discontinued
Despite its failure as a product, Flock pioneered concepts that became standard: social sharing buttons in browsers, integrated social feeds, and browser-level content creation tools. Its features were eventually subsumed by browser extensions, mobile apps, and the social platforms themselves.