The Social Browser: Flock 2.0

Do you enjoy seeing who has recently posted on your Facebook wall, viewing friends' recently uploaded Flickr photos and reading your friends' most recent tweets on Twitter? Then I have found the Web browser that was created just for you!

Flock 2.0: The Social Web Browser is for people who love features but hate plug-ins and

 extensions. The newest version of the product, Flock 2.0, comes with  a variety of features preconfigured and integrated into the browsing experience, without the user's additional work of setting up and layering extensions into your Firefox installation. These features include the current Mozilla engine (the same one in Firefox 3) and additional media and social net integration features.

Flock users have expressed that the first version of the product was more stable than Firefox 2, most likely because it was not overloaded with extensions, and that it did more than Internet Explorer 7. Now the speed and stability that Firefox 3 provides makes the decision to use Flock to be based on the features it offers.

Flock's capabilities include offering social media feeds from MySpace (which is new to version 2), Twitter, Facebook and other sites, which ultimately allows you to see everything that is happening with your friends and networks, all in your left sidebar. You are also able to view media (photos and videos) from media and social sites like Revver (new), YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, etc. The media bar across the top of the product can be set to view items your "friends" have posted or been tagged in.

Similar to current browsers, Flock also recognizes if a page you are on has an RSS feed and further suggests and allows you to subscribe to the feed. The second version also allows you to subscribe to media streams and displays the items in the media bar.

Upon closing or disabling the media and social sidebars, Flock is much like Firefox 3, including the "awesome bar" URL entry field, a feature that heightens success in your searches, as it allows you to search for a particular website www or a word/topic. Most other Firefox extensions can be added to Flock.

However, the product's comprehensiveness in social updates is what sets this browser above all the rest.

For more information on the new media topic, visit http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10066805-2.html?tag=TOCmoreStories.0.