Remembering Flock Social Browser – Why do no browsers today have integrated social media?

Flock was based on Chromium a good 10+ years ago. It fully integrated various social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, and a few more, along with RSS, and even had a media bar which integrated Flickr and some similar media sharing. The point was you did not have to go visit each and every separate site to see updates from your friends. This was all “on tap” in a vertical sidebar next to whatever other browsing you were doing.

I suspect though this was also Flock’s undoing, as back then Facebook, Twitter, etc were all fairly open and 3rd parties could connect easily the feeds. Today, Facebook, YouTube, etc want to be sure you must visit their actual page otherwise you won’t see the adverts, inserted posts in your feed, etc. Much of this functionality that allowed you to interact via a 3rd party became crippled over time.

I still miss Flock’s browser today…

See https://youtu.be/59isa3lKhjY

#technology #flockbrowser #socialnetworking #retro
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