While working on a prototype social placemarking (~ spatial annotation, Up My Street, et al) service we had a lot of user stories crop up where you would want tight integration with Flickr, del and the others. We tried solving it through plug-ins, bookmarklets and so on but it got incredibly messy, with add-ons left and right and no real interaction model. If Flock turns out to offer this category of tools, they've won me over.
When it comes to that 100M user base, I think it's great to aim for the stars. Having those 2.0 friends along when you browse is great, I could add a trackback at someone's site and then start blogging the topic at my place, capture an image to Flickr, cheer a goal on someone's page and get lots and lots of extra
del.icio.us functionality. C'mon, I'd love to see the del stats for a page I'm visiting, blog entries relating to it...and so on.
So that 100M user base may well materialize, not overnight, but over time we might laugh at that low early estimate.
What I don't understand is the comments on this thread about vertical integration of services. Honestly, this isn't Andrew Carnegie's age! Why do I not leave del.icio.us, even if the interface isn't great, even if I can't save a copy of a page? Because of the people. When I worked on my placemarking thesis, del was the best place to find relevant information - and relevant people. You can't replicate that user base, we're all locked in with one another (and now Joshua runs off and reads "Information Rules" and starts charging for value, not cost...)
Maybe Firefox can replicate Flock's functionality through plug-ins. Who cares? The important part is that we're finally getting our social browser.
- Fredrik
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