Evan Hamilton's dashboard

A comment on the update "Facebook Chat fixed, Flickr broken" in Flock:

Hey Jan,

Thanks for the note. I'm frustrated too - this is the longest we've gone without fixing an issue this big. I use Flickr plenty, and I feel your pain every time I have to log in again.

As I mentioned to Joe, we're doing our best to condense all the threads to one place - if you see any floating in the ether by themselves, please let us know.

I appreciate you posting - I am fighting to have your bugs addressed, but it's only through your feedback that I can prove to the decision-makers here that this is important.

Thanks for hanging in there,

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com – Evan Hamilton, on December 01, 2009 18:38

A comment on the update "Facebook Chat fixed, Flickr broken" in Flock:

Thanks for the head's up - that thread has been merged into this one.

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com – Evan Hamilton, on December 01, 2009 18:30

A comment on the update "Facebook Chat fixed, Flickr broken" in Flock:

Hey Joe,

Thanks for the note. At the time that I posted the quote you included, the "more functional fixes" referred to things that would literally keep the browser from working for some people - which I think we can all agree was more important than Flickr fixes.

The situation now is obviously different, and I would agree 100% that Flickr fixes are the #1 priority in terms of the current build after security updates. No argument there, and I continue to push for these bugs to get fixed...unfortunately, there is a lot of competition here between the new version of Flock and fixes for the old version.

As for GetSatisfaction, I don't disagree - overall I like the system but there are certainly flaws. We're doing our best to condense issues into single threads...please let us know if you see any that need to be condensed.

Thanks for speaking up in a polite way - I am as frustrated as you are now, but the best thing we can do is continue to communicate and work together!

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com – Evan Hamilton, on December 01, 2009 18:24

Evan Hamilton set one of Evan Hamilton's replies as an official response to "Flock, genious but ..." in Flock

Evan Hamilton replied on November 25, 2009 18:41 to the idea "Flock, genious but ..." in Flock:

Hey laurentcoupau,

Thanks for the feedback! We're definitely always working to add more services to Flock...unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this. Each service handles code differently, so we need to do specific work to integrate it.

If there are specific services you're interested in seeing in Flock, do a search here on our GetSatisfaction page: there are many threads requesting specific services, and you can add your vote by clicking "I like this idea!" on those pages. If a service gets enough votes, we'll look into integrating it.

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton set one of Evan Hamilton's replies as an official response to "About Flock" in Flock

Evan Hamilton replied on November 24, 2009 01:04 to the idea "About Flock" in Flock:

Hey Antsbugg,

I answered this in your other thread, but just in case you miss it:

The reason we don't update at the same time is because we're a different company than Mozilla...so we can't start putting the update code into Flock until they officially release it. Once they do, we try to integrate and push out the update as soon as possible - usually within two weeks.

Hope that answers your question!

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton set one of Evan Hamilton's replies as an official response to "Updates?" in Flock

Evan Hamilton replied on November 24, 2009 01:03 to the problem "Updates?" in Flock:

Hey Antsbugg,

The reason we don't update at the same time is because we're a different company than Mozilla...so we can't start putting the update code into Flock until they officially release it. Once they do, we try to integrate and push out the update as soon as possible - usually within two weeks.

Hope that answers your question!

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton replied on November 17, 2009 22:27 to the question "Higher Quality Ustream Encoder problem" in Flock:

Hey schwabbr,

Sorry to hear this isn't working for you...it's a bit bewildering as to why it would work in Firefox but not Flock (as we're based on Firefox). Unfortunately, there's not much we can do without having the same camera as you...testing with the cameras we have here would be somewhat pointless.

Have you tried posting in Ustream's support area? We'd be happy to provide them with any assistance they need (you are welcome to include my email address) but I'm not sure there's much we can do on this end.

Sorry I can't be more help,

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

A comment on the problem "Improve your availability / visibility for endusers!" in Flock:

Hey Philipp,

We'll definitely work on getting those accounts on the support page - thanks for bringing their lack of visibility to light.

As for the email situation, here's the facts: we had a full-time support person primarily answering emails and she still could not keep up with the flood that we got daily. It's just not practical until our company grows in size...until then, we'll try to surface our other methods of communication better, and I will recommend that GetSatisfaction provide us with further customization options for our landing page.

Thanks again!

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com – Evan Hamilton, on November 17, 2009 20:01

Evan Hamilton replied on November 16, 2009 19:53 to the problem "Improve your availability / visibility for endusers!" in Flock:

Hey Philipp,

Thanks for the detailed response! Let me hit some of the individual items you mentioned:

GetSatisfaction landing page: Now that I am pulling it up while logged out, it's certainly an odd collection of items here. They do all seem to be months-unanswered...despite the fact that we reply to posts every day. I don't have a lot of control over what shows up here, but I will follow up on the GetSatisfaction support page and request some further info as to how these items are chosen.

Contact link: It is unfortunate that we can't provide this...unfortunately, when we did have one we simply got too many emails to answer (because we are a small startup, as previously mentioned). I'll have to ruminate on how we can make it feel less like we're hiding and more like we want people to all participate together on GetSatisfaction.

Social Networks: We actually do have official Flock accounts: www.facebook.com/flock and www.twitter.com/flocker. Clearly these are not surfaced highly enough! Perhaps adding them to the support page would be a simple fix?

Thanks again for your help here,

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton replied on November 16, 2009 17:38 to the problem "Improve your availability / visibility for endusers!" in Flock:

Hey Philipp,

I'm sorry that you feel we're difficult to reach and I'd like to figure out how to improve this. From my perspective, we're quite available: I put my email in every post, we read our GetSatisfaction daily, you can contact us via Twitter or Facebook and I have Community Office Hours every Monday where I hang out on IM and talk Flock. Clearly either this isn't open enough for you or (more likely) it's not all visible to you.

Can you provide me with some detail about where you looked for support help and what you found lacking? I'd love to improve the visibility of the ways to contact us, but I need to know where it's breaking down.

As for our help desk system, we've found GetSatisfaction to be extremely useful. The ability for other community members to contribute is key, especially considering we are a small startup. Accepting individual tickets or emails just doesn't scale at this point, and allowing others to speak up here at GetSatisfaction means quicker, sometimes even more accurate help. Of course, if you have something that is personal/sensitive in nature you're welcome to contact me at the address below.

Thanks for your help improving our support,

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton replied on November 16, 2009 17:34 to the idea "Integrate security extensions, prevent phishing etc.!" in Flock:

Hi Philipp,

We firmly believe that the Gecko platform that Flock and Firefox are built on is one of the most secure browser engines currently available, and we strive to keep Flock updated to the latest security patch.

While most Firefox extensions work fine in Flock, we can't guarantee that all of them do. Furthermore, asking a developer to make their extension work on our platform isn't very convincing - most developers are making extensions in their free time, and making two versions of their extension is unappealing.

What does motivate developers to port their extensions is hearing from passionate users of their product. If there are specific extensions you'd like to see working in Flock that don't currently, I highly recommend contacting the developer to let them know that there is demand for a Flock version of their extension. You're absolutely welcome to include my email address and let them know that we'd love to help them in any way possible.

As for Flock being safe, it's all a matter of opinion. If you feel that the Gecko platform is an overall safe platform - as we and millions of others do - then you should feel safe surfing the web with Flock. Of course, we all have different opinions, which is what makes being a human so fun. :)

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton replied on November 16, 2009 17:25 to the praise "Flock on in South Africa" in Flock:

Dear Grant,

You are a gentleman and a scholar...and of course a Flockstar!

I can't thank you enough for spreading the word in South Africa, but hopefully I can at least hook you up with some swag! Shoot me an email at the address below and I will make sure to get you outfitted.

Keep spreading the word and we'll keep making Flock better - I can't wait until you see Flock 3.0! :)

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton replied on November 13, 2009 20:54 to the question "Support for '.info' domain email addresses" in Flock:

Hey Dave,

Can you clarify where you are trying to use your email address in the Flock experience?

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton replied on November 12, 2009 18:46 to the question "Flock v2.5.2 incompatible with jetpack 0.6.1 addon" in Flock:

Hey banduji,

Thanks for the kind words about Flock, it's always nice to hear that we're making people happy!

We're absolutely keeping a close eye on the Firefox 3.5 code, but we're also very cautious to introduce new code to our community. We've had issues with upgrades in the past and we're still seeing reports of bugs during Firefox 3.5 upgrades. We'll absolutely move to this codebase as soon as we feel it's ready. I totally understand your pain in the meantime...just hang in there with us!

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton replied on November 12, 2009 18:12 to the update "Facebook Chat Issues" in Flock:

@Chris: Yup, we think the issues are linked to Facebook pulling back on what third-party apps can access.

@Levi: No timeline yet, but we're working on shuffling resources this week to see if we can't take a look. I'll keep this thread updated when I know more.

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton posted an update in Flock on November 09, 2009 19:30:

Facebook Chat Issues

Hey folks,

Because of recent changes in Facebook's code, Flock is experiencing some Facebook chat-related bugs:

16920 - Default chat status is offline on a non-Facebook page
16921 - Facebook chat dialog doesn't appear on non-Facebook page, has synching issues, and the online friends flyout appears blank
17022 - Facebook notification and friends flyouts are broken, appear blank
17227 - Facebook notifications don't appear if your chat status is set to offline offline

We're currently looking into these bugs and I will post more info as soon as I have it. In the meantime, the Facebook Chat features on the actual Facebook website should still work fine.

Thanks for bearing with us, please let me know if you have any questions.

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Evan Hamilton replied on November 05, 2009 18:41 to the problem "Flock forget Flickr Passwd when it restart on my home computer" in Flock:

Hey folks,

I'm as frustrated with this bug as you are, but we do not recommend installing older versions of Flock. There are two reasons for this:

• Each browser release we put out has security updates designed to keep you safe on the web, which can be a dangerous place. 2.0.3 is many, many security patches behind 2.5.


• Downgrading can cause profile corruption and has the potential to damage your feeds/favorites/etc. Browsers just aren't really designed to be downgraded.

I'm pushing as hard as I can to get the team to address these Flickr bugs, and I apologize that it's taking so long...we're a small team and there are lots of other things taking priority. Please bear with us - but keep voicing your feelings on this issue so I can prove to the folks upstairs this issue is important to you.

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com