Flockpod is a very useful idea. It defines itself as a social interaction pod – i.e. a small place on any webpage where people get together and interact on-the-spot.. It functions like an Ajax lightbox, but is Flash based. The idea behind FlockPod is to provide a space on any webpage itself (without having to navigate elsewhere) for users to collaborate and interact right on-the-spot, to share ideas, opinions, questions or even debate. FlockPod comes from a Pune based sofwtare company called Harbinger Knowledge.

To integrate Flockpod into your website, you need to apply for an account, which is free upto 5 users in a pod. Beyond this, you need to pay by writing to their sales team. You do not need to install any software, just insert the icon in your webpage. Users visiting the webpage can bring up the pod by clicking the icon. The system works on standard browsers – IE, Firefox & Safari. Every Flockpod has a name and users can be a member of one or more Flockpods. Users can be members of multiple Flockpods and you can switch between the different pods that you are a member of. The different tasks that you can do in a FlockPod are called Flocktivities and five Flocktivities are currently supported- debate, spot poll, link sets, FAQ & tagcloud. Screeshots below… (to see a FlockPod in action go here)

FlockPod is a neat idea- it is refreshingly new and does something that can actually help users. However there are a few factors that might hinder its widespread adoption. Firstly, it suffers from feature overload- there are just too many buttons, controls etc on the interface, as a result what is actually useful is lost in the overloaded UI. If I had to build this, I’d slash the number of features by half. Secondly, I think that FlockPod’s business model is completely aligned in a B2B direction (e.g. send email to sales team for increasing the number of subscribers) whereas the service looks primarily B2C. Those two segments have completely different usage drivers. And lastly, I think there is just too much jargon floating around their application – Pod, FlockPod, Flocktivity (this one is actually a tongue twister!), FlockSign etc. Every new word poses a cognitive challenge for users to understand its meaning and decipher its usage. I think they would be much better off using words in plain, simple English. Just some food for thought for the Flockpod team….