The Coop, Social Networking For Mozilla

smileham noted a story about Mozilla developers considering work on a "social networking" Firefox extension called the "Coop" to take up where Flock left off. Also here is a wiki on the subject.

Comments

I love the internet

[MosesJones]

Geeks get to pretend we have a Social network, without all the hassle of actually physically meeting people

Re:I love the internet

[techpawn]

I thought that network was called Slashdot...

Re:I love the internet

[nuzak]

That's an antisocial network, asshole.

(smile, it's a joke)

Re:I love the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worse than that - a lot of people on social networking sites aren't even real people. For instance, I'm one of those robot-speech-thingies you hear about. Probably.

Re:I love the internet

[WhyDoYouWantToKnow]

Because there are a lot of people who live in their parent's basement.

Re:I love the internet

[beckerist]

What are you talking about? This REAL guy wants to sell me viagra! This REAL chick totally wants to bone me, now that that other REAL guy sold me some p3n15 3Nl4Rg3m3nt and that OTHER REAL dude is going to teach me how to buy and sell priceless trinkets! I also heard those two guys REALLY wanted a REAL PSP for Xmas (and it's all they wanted!) Who says they're not real? They're certainly real to me!

Re:I love the internet

[Pollardito]

Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am one of those robot-speech-thingies i hear about probably?

Re:I love the internet

[dharbee]

meet

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:I love the internet

[porkThreeWays]

If chicks are boning you then I think a PSP is the last thing you are worried about.

NAFSN

[IgLou]

It's a new acronym I'm starting: Not Another Freaking Social Network!

Really, I'd like to see existing social networks evolve and allow more interop before I want to see another new one come up. That's just me though.

Re:NAFSN

[IgLou]

Here's the thing, I don't want a program like this. If I'm browsing, I'm browsing. If I'm messaging, I'm messaging. If you want to interop the two activities, fine. I'm a little put off because I was under the impression that to build in this social browser extension they were introducing a new social network. That's something that I don't think we need. What needs to happen at some point is for social networks to allow interoperability so I can have my friends that use MSN get me on ICQ or GoogleTalk or you name it rather than joining every flipping network under the sun. For me an ideal would be, on my social network (say LinkedIn) I should be able to define I that I have a friend using a particular address (email) and then when I connect my messaging service (GoogleTalk) to that social network it determines who on my network has an authenticated connection to a messaging service. Now I realize I'm simplifying and it's not exactly on topic but I think until social networks talk to each other we don't need additional networks.

Now as for the browser extension, meh. I'm not excited about it. But I must say as the number of FireFox extensions grows that it's quickly no longer becoming a browser and being more of a "internet platform". Which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, it shifts perceptions that the internet is just web.

what my friends will say

[tetdfromage]

I can't wait until my friends start to ask me, "Hey, do you have a Coop?" And I'll reply, "Yeah, I keep my chickens in it."

Re:what my friends will say

[Red Flayer]

So we'll all be Coopers?

I think this'll be more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

/rimshot

Will there be a mini (PDA-viewable) version for our friends at BMW? You know, so they can all be Mini Coopers?

/double rimshot

Thanks folks, I'll be here all week. Try the fish.

The real question is ...

[Woldry]

... does this extension work in Flock?

Beginning of the end...

[daveisfera]

Firefox is starting to lose what made it great (small, streamlined design that anyone could add to with extensions) and becoming far more bloated than the original IE that it so gratefully replaced. I'm fine with them adding these features, but they should be extensions, not part of the browser itself. Sure, they could make "standard extensions" that come with the default installation of Firefox, but you should be able to remove them and keep the small, streamlined Firefox that we all love so much in the beginning.

Re:Beginning of the end...

[smooc]

I am getting a little tired of the argument: Ohhh they are only adding bloat! It is not streamlined any more. Bladadiebladiebla.

Firstly they are talking about implementing it as an extension. So no bloat added, it even gives you a choice!

Secondly if no experimenting is taking place, no new things will be developed. Experimenting is a necessity to survive. Just following standards will not set new improved standards, there is a reason why there are alpha versions of software: because it has experimental new features and they would like to see if they catch on.

I applaud this move of the Moz team for that matter. Finally an opensource project that looks beyond its own nose.

Re:Is that Flock or Flop?

[Jekler]

I thought Flock had a decent idea but as it developed it became less of the things I wanted and more of the things a 12 year kid might want.

For example, at first the idea of giving "Web 2.0" almost seamless integration sounded great. I imagined it similar to how MSN Explorer integrated Hotmail. I got the idea that Flock would do this with things like Wiki, certain popular blog sites, gmail, youtube, etc. with development making the features increasingly generic so more sites get included in the integration.

Instead, they overwrote certain FireFox features that were important to me (For example: keywords), forced me to log in to del.icio.us everytime I opened the browser, but left the actual user experience largely unchanged. Nothing on the web was any easier, different, or more integrated. Their sights were narrowed on Flickr, Photobucket, and blog APIs, but the browser doesn't change the web experience as a whole.

As a result, I was just better off using FireFox. Once FireFox 2 came along, it delivered some of the features Flock had, while Flock got stuck using FireFox 1.5.

I thought the idea was good, the execution was poor.

"where Flock left off"?

[jalefkowit]

"Pick up where Flock left off"? That implies that Flock development is over. It sure doesn't look that way from their Web site or their blog... if they're dead, someone might want to tell them ;-)

Re:Is that Flock or Flop?

[iperkins]

Flock got stuck using FireFox 1.5

Flock 0.5 (AKA Cardinal) was based on Firefox 1.5, but Danphe (0.7), on through Cormorant (0.8) and the most recent iteration, "Sulfur" (0.8.0.99) use Firefox 2, as far as I know (this from memory). I don't think Flock is using any Firefox 3 code, as yet. The del.icio.us issue was fixed some time ago.

Re:Oh good.

[jojoba_oil]

It's true. Pop culture is obsessed with the gerund.

I'll MSN you about it later. Or do you prefer that I text instead?

Re:Oh good.

[FlyingSquidStudios]

Please don't verb like that. Next thing you'll be doing things adverbly.

Re:Is that Flock or Flop?

[Brento]

I thought the idea was good, the execution was poor.

As somebody who used to live off the nightly builds, I can say that the problem wasn't that the execution was poor - it was that the ideas changed too much, too frequently. Have a vision, document it, and then build it. The programmers appeared to be tasked with executing visions that changed dramatically on a monthly basis.

I would test whole featuresets only to find them disappear completely out of the next build. My (least) favorite was the RSS integration. It's integrated with the bookmarks, no wait it's a separate thing, no wait it's gone altogether. Huh? Development time was wasted, testing time was wasted, and users got flaked out.