The explosive growth in popularity of social media sites has led to many things: a generation who know everyone else's last names due to Facebook status updates; artists moving from the club scene to the digital platform in order to create a presence; more people 'remembering' your birthday, aka the death of personal space, in the wake of simulated personal property.

The next step? Flock, the 'social media browser'.
It's based on everyone's favourite… Firefox, but comes built-in with some really (really!) nifty functions that should appeal to everyone addicted to social media (i.e. everyone), and of course you can personalise it with add-ons. Flock is compatible with most of the social media Big Boys (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Livejournal, Xanga, etc.) - although a couple are mysteriously missing (but you can vote for who gets to join the cool kids club on their Facebook group). It keeps you logged into these networks, shows you what friends of yours are online - and lets you share media with these friends directly.

Besides that, you can sync it with your blog(s) and post anytime, from anywhere. You can even right click items and say "blog this". Or you can drag items into The Shelf (media clipboard) and keep them there for when you want to blog about it. There's a Media Mini Bar where you can search, stream and view media. For example you can find all photos of yourself on Facebook and it will display them in an easy-to-navigate photo strip (instead of having to drudge through page after page on Facebook itself). RSS is hardly groundbreaking anymore, but Flock's built-in reader is quite easy to use.

In fact, Flock itself is easy to use – and the idea works. You don’t need to browse anymore; you’ve got all you need in the browser itself. Revolutionary.
And it's free!

And I'm not alone in my enthusiasm - it won the Judge's Choice Award of “Best Application” in the Open Web Awards.
Flock really does have the potential to change the role of the browser, especially with the update coming soon that will integrate features for the users of webmail providers such as Yahoo! or Gmail. It has set new standards that Firefox will have to match if it wants to stay as everyone's browser darling.

Let Flock lead the way and we, the (social) media ravenous, shall follow.