By David Chartier
October 15, 2008 - 01:48PM CT

Flock is a cross-platform browser that exists in the space between your OS's default browser and addons.mozilla.org. Using Firefox as its foundation, Flock is built by an independent team that bakes in social and blogging features to create something altogether different, and the team has just released a major 2.0 update.

We took a look at the first beta of Flock 2 back in June and, overall, found it to be a compelling product. Flock's developers aim to build a "social browser," so they've incorporated what Firefox users will likely consider to be specifically designed, in-house add-ons to meet that goal. A People Sidebar, for example, can aggregate friend activity from sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

For Flock 2's official release, however, the team listened to its number one request and integrated MySpace as yet another social outlet. Other Flock features you won't find duplicated in competing browsers are a Media Bar, a blog post editor, a Web Clipboard, and a "My World" view that aggregates your RSS feeds, social activity, and media subscriptions into one personalized start page.

The media bar can aggregate photos and videos from sites like Flickr, Digg, Revver, YouTube, and Photobucket in a compact area at the top of your browser window. It can also integrate with your accounts at some of these sites to show you, say, just photos from your contacts at Flickr in addition to (or instead) of public streams and popular picks.