I first wrote about the Flock browser in the Network World Web Applications Alert newsletter in April last year and the company has just released Version 2.0, that adds to its list of impressive features.

To recap, Flock is a Web browser based on Firefox (in this release it is based on the latest version, Firefox 3), but extends the Firefox code to improve both usability and functionality.

Impressively, given the potentially overwhelming competition from Internet Explorer and Firefox, Flock has managed to not only survive but thrive – just consider that there’s a large community of committed Flock users who have stuck with the product despite the blandishments of the other browser purveyors. A big factor in that is that Flock can use all of Firefox’s add-ons!

Anyway, this new release adds a really powerful ability: Flock 2.0 is now the first browser that supports the Media RSS standard. This allows you to automatically retrieve images from any media feed.

Flock’s other claim for this release is the ability for social network users to use Flock as the hub of their interaction with the likes of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Flock will store all social networking service passwords and automatically log you in on request.

Better still Flock will monitor your social networking services for updates and inform you about what’s going on with your friends and contacts. Flock can also subscribe to multimedia feeds on Flickr and YouTube, upload photos to Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, and Piczo, and be used to publish to most of the top blogging platforms (that doesn’t, unfortunately, include Drupal).

Available for both Windows and OS X, Flock is still free and definitely worth a serious look.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.