Flock comes to the end of the road as support ceases

Flock, the original social web browser, has been marked for termination. Originally released back in 2005 and powered by a Firefox core, Flock brought social to the browser by integrating with Flickr, del.icio.us (as it was at the time) and a whole host of blogging services. Later, with the social networking revolution, Flock cozied up with a plethora of platforms, including the usual suspects: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Flock moved to the much faster Chromium core late last year, bringing greater speed (especially on the Mac), which was by then, an important factor in the "browser wars." Unfortunately for Flock, it wasn't enough to combat the new Chromium-powered social browser upstart RockMelt, which was well funded and had a lot of hype behind it.

In January of this year, Zynga swooped in and bought the team behind Flock in a talent acquisition. Unfortunately for Flock, that didn't include technology, CEO Shawn Hardin or the Flock.com domain, so the writing was on the wall for the now struggling browser.

Today, Flock.com has a notice stating that support for Flock will be withdrawn as of April 26, bringing an end to the social browser, and suggesting users look to Chrome or Firefox. Although not a Mac-specific browser, Flock added something extra to the browser choice on OS X, so it's sad to see it slinking off into the sunset, even if we do have RockMelt.

[via TechCrunch]