Yesterday I downloaded and fired up the Flock 1.1 release. What is Flock? Flock is a Firefox-based browser aimed toward the social-networking butterfly in all of us. But it’s much more than that. How much more? Let’s find out.

Shawn Hardin, President and Chief Executive Officer of Flock, has announced the release of version 2.5 of the Flock social web browser based on Firefox 3. Flock automatically manages updates and media from several popular social services, including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Digg, YouTube and Twitter.

The Flock project has been building a "social Web browser" since 2005. The upcoming Flock 0.9 release adds new blogging features, integrates media streams into the browser, and includes an overhaul of the Flock bookmark system. It's not perfect yet, but Flock 0.9 is a big leap forward.

Flock is essentially Firefox with a handful of highly focused extensions built in to let you connect with social services like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and others. We think Flock 1.0, which is now in public beta, offers a fantastic browsing experience that brings you the best of Firefox with a few tweaks that prove to be exceptionally helpful.

Flock is "The" Social Web Browser. Take Mozilla's Firefox, insert native del.icio.us, gmail, blogger and flickr support (to name just a few) and you'll have something close to what Flock has to offer.

"...Flock is preparing for a very important milestone in our company’s history. We are on the cusp of completing Flock 1.0, which integrates your friends from your favorite social services into the browser, paving the way for easy communication and sharing with people you care about, no matter where you are on the Web. This is by no means a modest ambition..."

Flock, a social-focused browser startup that has raised nearly $30 million in venture funding, has ceased building on top of the open source Firefox browser, say multiple sources. The next version of the Flock browser will be built on Google’s open source Chrome browser platform. The last version of Flock was released in October 2008.

As you spend more-and-more of your time on the Internet and connecting with others, Flock can help to streamline repetitive social activities.

It may be almost a year late, but Flock, the browser dedicated to social networking, has finally released version 1.0. The results are surprisingly compelling.