Sure, I'm a bit biased, but even before I dug a Flockstar, I dug Flock (the two are unrelated, really). Those of you following me for a spell, saw me talk about it here and here, then, of course, in a overly dramatic moment of enthusiasm, I was caught on film evangelizing Flock here (still can't believe I went on and on about the pretty stars...ack!). Oh...and thanks to Daryl, who recently acknowledged my Flock superfan position.

And Chris is so right, there is a much bigger vision there. Personally, all of the gorgeous simplicity built into my very first Flock experience was enough to make me a believer. They did it first. They surprised me. I hadn't thought about a browser doing what this browser was doing.

I used to click a big, blue E on my desktop and think nothing of it. I settled for what was, and it isn't like I lack imagination and vision myself. I just think that if you were to ask around a group of a random 100 people, they don't think about it, either. Even when Firefox came on the scene, non-hardcore surfers didn't pay much attention.

It's no mistake that some of the core people at Flock were also responsible for the Spread Firefox campaign that knocked a larger part of the online world out of it's complacency. Whether it's Firefox or Flock or whatever, vision is what drives this team.

Tell ya what, I don't want to go bumbling around for extensions, some which work, some don't. I want the package deal. I want the core browser to keep knocking my socks off. I've been spoiled now. I have high expectations. I see Flock as my future OS. Eff buying expensive software that I use 5% of the capabilities of. I want simple UI. I want to be able to really simply and really quickly create, search, tag, connect, find, edit, post, whatever. Gee, I hadn't thought about this before Flock...so what does that say?

So, okay, the browser is flippin' slow. It's totally annoying. And all of those amazing visions I see Chris working on, well, they aren't available to me yet. And that makes me impatient. But, damn, it's a helluva lot better than the alternative even as it is now, and with community support and encouragement, they'll get there faster.

Sigh...we're at a High Horse High Time right now in the tech community and, frankly, it makes me tired. Working at a startup makes me appreciate how difficult doing this work is. We have limited resources, too many demands, bigass giant internet gobblers waiting to take us out, a teensy window of time to innovate and a very skeptical audience to deliver to. Sounds like fun, don't it? Well, it is.

:: I'd also like to give a HUGE shoutout to our champion, Michael Arrington, whose very young TechCrunch has quickly risen to the top 100 blogs for a damned good reason. He has a whole lotta vision himself and can see past hype and skepticism. ::

I've said this before, but, egad, why the hell are we discouraging people who are building tools - good or bad, useful or useless, on the right track or off base - because everything that is happening right now is necessary to build a better web.

Rock on Chris. Rock on Flock.

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