I received my Flock 1.0 beta invite the other day. “And you’ll never…surf…alooone!” The People sidebar is the most obvious difference between 0.9 and 1.0. I can see my Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr contacts (if I choose too) in the sidebar and interact with them as I browse.
When I select the Flickr icon on the sidebar, I can see if there are any new uploads from my Flickr contacts. “Budjette: Media updated 3 hours ago.” When I click on the Media link in Budjette’s tab, his images come up on the Flock Media bar, which is on top, instead of opening in the main browser window.
The YouTube icon brings up my media and my favorites, also in the topbar.
Twitter on the sidebar, if it can accommodate a refresh button and a public timeline button, would absolutely replace all my tiny tweetapps. There is a “post link” button, and friends’ tweets refresh once in a while. I can also tweet directly from the sidebar, saving me one tweet app or one main browser window. I used the feedback link last night to request a refresh button, and got not one but two emails reassuring me that the Flock team was looking into that very thing. Actual feedback from a feedback dialog box! How refreshing.
The Facebook tab lets me change my status, see my friends’ status updates, and lets me poke, share a link, send a message, see the media they’ve uploaded. I see Sette is redefining frolicking at the beach, for example, just by reading her status message and noting her profile picture has changed. (Grrrr. My turn will come, but when?)
The blogging feature has been around since the first time I tried Flock, but I’m only using it now that I’ve committed to WordPress. When I switched to iBlog 2, I found myself becoming overly concerned with how my blog looked. Too much time went to minding my <p>’s and <div>’s. This time around I desire a certain ease: the virtual equivalent of the frayed, holey shirt, the one I reach for when I want to write, not to appear noteworthy in meetings.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: Flock1.0, blogging, iBlog 2, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook
This used to be my second life as a verb. 