Geoffrey "Fredo" Arone seems to be stepping up as the public voice of Flock now that he's in the position of Chief Strategy Officer and Bart's taking on the more abstract role as chairman. In a recent interview with Richard MacManus, Fredo talks about Flock someday becoming a mainstream browser alongside the likes of Firefox and Internet Explorer. Not sure what I think about that -- (sure, ok, whatev) -- since I think Flock'd be wiser to try to build to an extremely dedicated niche audience and then work outwards from there -- preferring slow but constant iterative growth, like the iPod found... as opposed to Tech Crunch boom-and-bust sign-up and vacate cycles betacoms have come to know and despise. It's good to hear, however, that with Erikka Arone, Apple's former iPod Product Manager in the Worldwide Product Marketing Group, coming onboard as Flock's Senior Director of Marketing, they'll have some real experience in their court to help tailor whatever strategy they adopt. Meanwhile, Flock will suffer another bummer of a loss this September when Lloyd, heretofore Flock's most exceptional QA Lead and unofficial staff photographer, will migrate back home to Canada. Mum's the word on his future plans, but at the least, it's clear that the OSM looks after its own. . . . Oh, and for those interested, I found a couple stand-alone Mac apps that offer similar features to those already found in Flock:

• Pukka and Postr -- tools for submitting your bookmarks to social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Ma.gnolia
• PictureSync -- support tons of web services, Flock really needs to open up choice in its photo sharing tools
• Tickr -- developed by one of those Slide folks, provides a good model for the disputed photo topbar
• Sidenote -- similar to the original Shelf concept that Daryl implemented

Note that these don't suggest that Flock's a bad idea (it's not), it's important to be aware of what else is out there that might provide opportunities to learn from.