What the Flock?  A new Web browser?  That’s right – the folks at a new company called Flock have developed a new Web browser built on Mozilla (the guys behind the beloved Firefox Web browser).  Flock is a new browser made especially for bloggers and social networking freaks like me (and probably you).

Flock is a powerful Web browser built on the Firefox architecture.  It has everything Firefox has (including extensions), but it also has everything a social network power user could want – including a built in sidebar they call the “People Sidebar” that connects you to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and more, a “MediaBar” that lets you subscribe to your friends photos, videos and more and alerts you when they upload new media anywhere on the Web, and probably coolest of all – the Facebook SocialBar stays active at the bottom of the browser, alerting you of new IMs and Facebook updates, even when you visit other sites besides Facebook.

Don’t worry, you can use your Firefox Extensions in Flock!
Admitedly, I first ran into Flock a couple months ago and didn’t even give it a chance.  I’m so dependant on my Firefox extensions that I can’t live without them.  But what I didn’t realize the first time is that any Firefox extension works with Flock.  In fact, to add them to Flock you visit the same Add-ons page on the Mozilla Website and install them the same way as Firefox.  Everything from Shareaholic, Better Gmail, PingFire, PowerTwitter, and more work perfectly for me in Flock just as they do in Firefox.

The list of integrated features goes on and on – from Webmail, to RSS feeds, and more.  If you use Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking sites – or if you’re a blogger – then try Flock and you’ll quickly realize how easier it makes using the Internet.  Bloggers will especially love the way it connects with your blog (whether that be Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, etc).  In fact, this blog post was created using the Flock Blog Editor.

Go to http://www.flock.com to download Flock and try it out.

Even when Chrome comes out with Extensions its going to be hard to pull me away from Flock – we’ll just have to wait and see.  Try it out and let me know in the comments how you like it.

Digg, like many destination Web sites, has always struggled to maintain high profits from a revenue model based almost entirely on advertising.  I would estimate that the site gets at least 100 million banner ad impressions a month, based off their traffic data reported on Quantcast.  That might seem like a lot, but it’s not.  Calculate an average banner CPM of $15.00 and you’re only talking $18 Million in gross revenue a year from banner ads.  Compare to Facebook.com that easily gets 25 Billion ad impressions per month, and makes anywhere from $100 to $170 Million per month in gross revenue from their ads.

A single 300×250 banner, and a 160×600 skyscraper banner isn’t going to cut it anymore for Digg.  Publishers are being forced to come up with innovative and different ways to help marketers reach their audience.  Ad buying is down, and marketers who are spending money want to make sure they are getting the biggest bang for their buck.  Traditional banners that get ignored by users aren’t giving them a big enough bang, and more and more ad impressions are being given to low paying ad networks instead.  Facebook is solving this problem by allowing advertisers to target specific users by a handful of targeting criteria that no other site can offer.  Digg’s answer is a new ad spot that is integrated within the site’s content, and where users can choose which ads to display.

They’re calling them “Digg Ads” and according to the Digg Corporate blog, they “will give you more control over which advertisements are displayed on Digg. The more an ad is Dugg, the less the advertiser will have to pay. Conversely the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, pricing it out of the system.”

The ads will look just like regular diggs and will be displayed in the same stream where you see all the other links, photos, and videos, although they’ll be clearly marked as sponsored content.  Users can “digg” the ad or “bury” it, just like they do for the regular posts.  Popular ads are less expensive for the advertiser, and are thus displayed more throughout the site.  Ads that get buried cost more and are eventually taken off the site.  Digg says the goal here “is to create a better experience by giving you more control over advertising content that appears on Digg.”

Digg will be rolling out this ad format over the next few months and is hoping that they’ll see a lot more traction with these ads than their traditional banners.

The idea of allowing users to give a site feedback about the ads that are displayed is not new.  Facebook has been doing this for awhile (look for the little thumbs up/down icons under each ad), but it’s unclear how Facebook uses the data or if they remove ads that users have marked as unwanted.  It’s also unclear if anyone but me actually takes the time to click the icons and give their feedback.

At least on Digg, if you really don’t like an ad you know you can get rid of it as long as other users in the Digg community feel the same way.  It’s going to make marketers spend time creating really awesome ads, and not waste money buying mediocre ads that are going to get ‘buried.’  The question is, how will Digg protect against people abusing the system?