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The makers of the Web browser Flock like to refer to their product as “the social Web browser.” And it’s probably a fair description, as the main focus of the free Firefox-based browser is to make it easy for users to follow and use social networking and media-sharing Web sites.
But one of the problems with Flock is that it is only social for some social networking and Web 2.0 sites, which means that, for example, if you rely on LinkedIn or MySpace instead of Facebook, then Flock may not be all that social for you.
Of course, the makers of Flock realize this, which is why the main new features in the recently released Flock 1.2 are focused on adding support for new sites and services.
Probably the most popular site added to Flock 1.2 is Digg. Users of Flock can now track their Digg friends along with traditional social sites supported in Flock such as Facebook. This version of Flock also adds support for Pownce, which goes along nicely with the Twitter support already found in Flock.
Flock also has built-in integration with popular Webmail services such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail, making it possible to quickly see new messages in the toolbar of the Flock browser. Flock 1.2 now adds similar support for AOL Mail.
Most of the functionality of Flock has remained the same from the last release. Flock still provides a nice unified interface for hyper-connected people who can’t stand to not know what their friends are doing that very second. Of course, as has been the case for a while, savvy Firefox users can duplicate most of the features of Flock (and get broader social site support) through good use of popular social networking extensions to Firefox.
Those interested in trying the free Flock browser, which runs on Windows, Linux and the Mac, can find it at www.flock.com.