Flock

The social web browser: Firefox, then Chromium, with Facebook and Twitter in the sidebar, bought by Zynga and closed in 2011

Shut down
19902026

Flock was a "social web browser" from a Palo Alto start-up founded by Bart Decrem and Geoffrey Arone in 2005, released as a public beta on 21 October 2005 on Mozilla code with built-in blogging, del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr and later Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Gmail in a sidebar. Version 1.0 came in November 2007 and version 3, based on Chromium, in June 2010. Zynga acquired the company in January 2011 and the browser was discontinued on 26 April 2011.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2005
  2. 11 April 2005 other
    Flock announced

    A social browser built on Firefox.

  3. 21 October 2005 Launch
    Flock 0.5 public preview

    Blogging, del.icio.us and Flickr built in.

  4. 2007
  5. 5 November 2007 Version
    Flock 1.0

    Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Gmail in the sidebar.

  6. 2010
  7. 16 June 2010 Version
    Flock 3 on Chromium

    The Mozilla base is dropped.

  8. 2011
  9. 7 January 2011 Acquisition
    Zynga acquires Flock

    The team goes to work on games.

  10. 12 April 2011 Shutdown announced
    Support to end 26 April

    Users told to move to Firefox or Chrome.

  11. 26 April 2011 Shutdown
    Flock discontinued

The site through time

Browse flock.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Flock Inc. 2005–2011 Founded Founded by Bart Decrem and Geoffrey Arone; about $30 million raised
Zynga 2011–2011 Acquisition Bought the team; closed the browser three months later

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Zynga bought Flock in January 2011 for its engineers, not its browser, and on 12 April 2011 Flock announced that support for the browser would end on 26 April 2011, telling users to move to Firefox or Chrome. The company had raised about $30 million, peaked at a few million users and never found a business; by 2011 the "social" features it pioneered, sharing to Facebook and Twitter from the browser, were extensions or built in everywhere.

Our analysis: Flock had the right observation in 2005, that the browser was where social media happened, and the wrong product: a whole browser, forked from Firefox and later rebuilt on Chromium, that had to be kept current with its upstream while adding a sidebar of feeds, a media bar and a blog editor. Every one of those features became an extension, and the browser makers themselves added the rest. Its team was worth more to Zynga than the product was to anyone.

History [edit]

The social browser

Flock was announced in April 2005 by Bart Decrem, who had run marketing for the Firefox 1.0 launch, and Geoffrey Arone, and released as a public developer preview, version 0.5, on 21 October 2005. Built on Firefox, it added things Firefox did not have: a blog editor that posted to Blogger, WordPress and TypePad, del.icio.us bookmarks synced across machines, a Flickr photo bar you could drag pictures from, and a "shelf" for saving snippets. It got a wave of attention and $10 million from Bessemer, Shasta and Catamount, and later about $30 million in all.

Version 1.0, released on 5 November 2007 with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Gmail feeds in a "people" sidebar and a media bar across the top, was the definitive Flock; PC World named it one of the year's best products and it reached a few million downloads. Flock 2, on Firefox 3, followed in October 2008. In June 2010 Flock 3 threw away the Mozilla base for Chromium and became, in effect, Chrome with a social sidebar. Its user numbers never justified the engineering, and its revenue, search deals and affiliate links, was small.

Zynga

In January 2011 Zynga, then hiring anyone who could ship software, acquired Flock; the team went to work on FarmVille and CityVille and the browser was left alone. On 12 April 2011 Flock announced it would stop supporting the browser on 26 April 2011 and told its users to install Firefox or Chrome. The features it had introduced were, by then, everywhere: share buttons, social sidebars, synced bookmarks. The name was later reused by an unrelated team-messaging product.

The domain today

flock.com belongs to Flock, an Indian team messaging and collaboration app unrelated to the browser.

Similar projects

Internet Explorer The browser that won the war and lost the peace 1995–2022 NCSA Mosaic Put the pictures in the page, and the web took off 1993–1997 Netscape Navigator The browser that opened the web 1994–2008 Microsoft Edge Legacy Microsoft's fresh start that lasted one engine 2015–2021 Wunderlist The to-do app Microsoft bought to bury 2011–2020 Vine Six seconds, looped forever 2013–2017

Sources [edit]

  1. Start-up wants to improve on Firefox CNET 12 April 2005 [archived]
  2. Zynga buys social web browser Flock Mashable 7 January 2011 [archived]
  3. Flock shutters social web browser Mashable 12 April 2011 [archived]
  4. Social browser Flock shuts down TechCrunch 12 April 2011 [archived]
  5. Flock web browser to be discontinued at end of April Macworld 12 April 2011 [archived]
  6. Flock browser has been killed off TechSpot 12 April 2011 [archived]

Last verified: 16 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).