Hype’s a wonderful thing but when it bares no fruit you feel conned. That’s how I feel after trying Flock. This is the Firefox browser with social networking and sharing built in. Blog from your browser – yep. Flickr integration – woo! Del.icio.us integration of your bookmarks – impressive.
But it’s so SLOW. The blogging GUI is also lacking and for me just doesn’t work very well – I can quickly log into the blog and post from any browser so where’s the advantage. I do like the Del.icio.us integration but I also don’t want the whole world to see my favourites – they are my precious and I want to keep them that way. Did I mention it was slow? Admitedly it’s a very early release with optimisation to come but if this is the best of the Web 2.0 apps then it can flock off – I’ll stick with Firefox thank you very much.
I too will stick with Firefox. Flock is just that: a Firefox version spiced with a few extensions. For non techies, this may be a good download, and better than IE anyway, but for techies, Firefox or even Opera are a much wiser choice.
I’ll give some credit to the Flock team because this is a very early beta, but I’m skeptic about how something built on Firefox can be much better (and faster) than it.
About favourites: I know what you mean, and I have mixed feelings myself… but ultimately, I don’t think this is the way to go. Your favourites, your precious… would not exist if web authors had not shared their information on the web. I ask you this: think for a few minutes of how much you have learned on the web, then think of how much you would not have learned if no one had shared… Sharing bookmarks is just your way of passing out information when you cannot provide better one yourself. It is… beautiful.
I’ve no doubt that if people didn’t share the world would be worse off. My issue is that if I share everything then it’s easy to see who I bank with, where my mortgage is etc. Maybe it’s just my own insecurities but some things I feel comfortable being out there for all to see – Flock with Del.icio.us isn’t one of them.
I’m with you on this Ian. Sharing is essential. Indiscriminate sharing is downright foolish. Unfortunately, information security is easily left langusihing in the shadows when we’re dazzled by the brilliance of the Next-Big-Thing. We just need a little common sense. But as we all know- that aint so common.
Touché 🙂
I admit I haven’t thought much about *those* security related bookmarks…
On the other hand, I know the name of my bank and don’t need to bookmark it to find it later. I may not as easily remember that OOP website, or that book review…
>> “My issue is that if I share everything then it’s easy to see who I bank with, where my mortgage is etc.”
I understand your concern, but don’t you think it may be a little too late for that? Perhaps you can hide yourself from us mere mortals, but take heed: you are filed anyway. Ever typed your name on a major search engine? How many relevant results did that bring?
I guess this debate deserves more pondering than I originally envisioned. What do you think?
While Google, MSN and others may have more information than I like I still consider this to be information that I have published and I want to be fully in control of that. If a Google search finds more about me than I like that’s my own fault for openly using my name in a forum, website or e-mail. If I could easily share selected bookmarks through Flock then it wouldn’t have been an issue
It’s similar to when P2P apps burst out onto the mainstream – the options were there to not share My Documents and other files but how many people were lured into the free music without thinking about the privacy issues? Flock and other apps make sharing sexy but there is a limit and it would be nice to think Web 2.0 apps could let people pause for breath before the get the image of door to door salesman imposing their goods on the uneducated whether they want it or not. And as you said – once those links are cached in Google there’s not a lot you can do.