It's still pretty early on in Flock's history, so a Slashdotting now and then certainly isn't a bad thing. Not to mention homepage coverage on BusinessWeek and a great write up by Stowe Boyd, who I had the pleasure to meet today. But the feeling that I've gotten from Slashdot and around the blogs surround two things:

What the heck is it? ... and ...
Why do you have such an ugly website?

Well, the first answer would take forever to explain, so I'd rather just show you.
For the second one, hey, it took me like 2 hours on the day of our initial private launch. I was focused more on the browser and less on the site and if you don't like it, well good â€“ more time to spend using Flock on other sites!

Anh, no, seriously ... I'll be taking another whack at it eventually but at least as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather have it be super simple, super plain and super lean. I'll tone the volume down in the next release but at least the design, for whatever reason, seems to have inspired some kind of derivitive work.

Technorati Tags: flock, slashdot, flockbuzz, businessweek, web2con, web20, flocklaunch

💬 Comments from the original post

kondoman · 2005-10-05 21:25:34

I think the problem is that it is NOT super simple, super plain, or super lean. If you think that fits those categories, you may have designeritis.

Nero · 2005-10-05 21:30:04

I've only heard a few people say the design is bad. I've heard more people say the problem is that the site doesn't validate in w3's validator. It's a sign of a rocky start for a browser company's first produced document to not be a valid document for their browser. It can't be an ugly web page because, technically, it's not a web page. It's a document which a browser has managed to interpret as a web page in spite of invalid code.

Gussy · 2005-10-05 21:38:33

Looks like it is going to be an amazing browser. Can't wait to try it out.

semaphore · 2005-10-05 23:40:36

Is it going to be Open Source?

Jonathan · 2005-10-06 01:57:23

I love the Flock design. Really. And I'm looking forward to check it out, once it gets out of beta.

Jesse Moore · 2005-10-06 04:54:35

You're hot, Chris. I will try Flock just because of that. ;-)

Flock at Chetan’s monologue · 2005-10-06 06:38:04

[...] Flock, a social browser in development, looks like it is going to be a true compliment to Web 2.0 harnessing i [...]

theLostShirt · 2005-10-06 10:22:16

I loved the website. And I am a designer..

Roomity Sux · 2005-10-06 15:00:13

These roomity.com guys are total spammers.

FactoryJoe · 2005-10-06 15:15:46

I decided to delete the Roomity comments because they didn't seem to be adding to the discussion, nor did their comments seem at all relevant.

mxyzptlk · 2005-10-07 03:51:48

Will the browser support Textpattern for blogging?

FactoryJoe · 2005-10-07 14:03:39

Any blog platform that offers an open API will be supported -- so yes, you will be able to publish to TextPattern with Flock. Jon Hicks rejoice!

ch0de’s Bog » Flock Screenshots · 2005-10-08 07:35:42

[...] Well, it’s almost ready. This post should explain it all! [...]

Yelling Lizard · 2005-10-08 08:52:05

Flock of Photos Flock blogging topbar Originally uploaded by factoryjoe. It appears Chris Messina has posted several Flock screen shots to his flickr account. This is the first look at Flock, which has been an elusive software project with not so m...

Jason Anderson · 2005-10-09 02:17:24

I've been wondering about this project. I will have to definitely check it out when it's released. Looks pretty nice.

MacWebb.com · 2005-10-13 09:34:34

Interesting New WebKit-Based Browser There is an interesting new WebKit (I think) browser being developed, called "Flock". I just heard about it on the Ajaxian.com podcast, so I don't have any concrete information yet, but this post by one of the developers (and the associated Flickr ...

Two Ells » man flock · 2005-10-14 05:30:06

[...] ere kind of hurtful or misinformed, and you can read a couple of Flockers’ responses here, here, and here. Andy Smith puts it pretty well: Recap: Vim go [...]

An Acrobat · 2005-10-21 05:28:22

The design is perfect--it fits in perfectly with the essence of Flock. I'm flipping through all the features now and love it. I like being able to browse my sites by tag... great feature.

Take a gander at Flock (pun intended)