We have to admit, we've been a bit skeptical about Flock in the past. It's a web browser built on Firefox code with a whole bunch of social networking features. Because you know, you can't use Firefox to access social networking/bookmarking sites.

But something funny happened when we downloaded and installed the new Flock 1.0 beta that was released today: We liked it. The browser includes a blog editing client, a "web clipboard" that lets you drag and drop images, text and URLs into your sidebar for handy access on other sites, and a media bar for finding YouTube and other videos.

The coolest stuff happens in the sidebar. Flock will automatically detect when you login to a social networking site like Flickr and pop up a Flickr-specific sidebar that shows you a list of contacts and their current status. Click on your contact and their page will pop up in the main window. Click on the media tab under their name and a new bar pops up at the top of your window with all of their recently uploaded images and videos.

There's also a nifty "my world" tab that shows you all of your most recently viewed bookmarks and RSS feeds. Flock is a bit of a memory hog compared with Firefox, but if you've got enough RAM, Flock really does look like a great tool for anyone who spends half of their day on Facebook, YouTube, and other social sites. Keep in mind, this is still a public beta. No final release date for Flock 1.0 has been set yet.