Flock, a freely downloadable open-source browser, is off to an encouraging start with hundreds of thousands of downloads. But will its ad-driven business model lead to profits? (eWEEK.com)Flock, the new Web browser which aggregates services no other browser has yet been able to provide, has attracted widespread user attention with its first beta version after only six weeks in release.
But it remains to be seen whether its ad-driven business model will be able to sustain it over time.
Co-founder and CEO Bart Decrem told Ziff Davis Internet Wednesday that the fledgling company has hired more staff to handle demand for the browser, plus service the needs of a quickly growing support community—despite the fact that the initial release was intended for evaluation by Web developers only.
Flock, which started with about a dozen full-time staff and three part-timers, is "closing in on about 20 full-timers," Decrem said, including employees in Europe and Japan.
Flock 0.49 has been downloaded "multiple hundreds of thousands of times," he said, adding that the company really doesn't have an accurate download counter yet.
Will Flock trump Firefox? Click here to read more.
Flock, literally housed in a garage just off the Stanford University campus in Northern California, is a Mozilla Firefox-based, freely downloadable open-source browser to help get users around the Internet quickly while integrating a number of Web services and presenting them in intuitive ways.
Users can post a Weblog entry, build and share photo collections and share favorite Web sites (bookmarks are for books, Flock says) with friends all in one place—within the browser itself.
Flock, which is distributed under the Mozilla and GNU public licenses, is aimed mostly at bloggers.
Analysts estimate there are 10 million to 15 million sophisticated Internet users writing Internet journals, and Flock sees this as its prime target market.
"We've gotten off to an encouraging start," Decrem said, "and that really excites us. Our next step is to focus on listening to what we've heard our users tell us. And what they're telling us is basically two things: No. 1, Flock is an intriguing product, and No. 2, it still needs work.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Flock Gains Traction with Downloads
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