Just a quick post to draw your attention to the fact that a new different browser was launched last Sunday. It is called Rockmelt, and even though I still haven’t tried it much, it may well go into the Annals of Social Media history at least for being the first truly social media browser. Currently, downloads are by invitation only. I’ve been playing around with it, and while the features require a bit of learning, but at first sight it indeed looks promising.
You may ask, what is new here? Well, it is a browser that has embedded social media: your Facebook friends on the left, and little buttoms with facebook news, twitter feeds, or any other social media site that you decide on your right. It’s tricky to explain, but it indeed integrates social media into your browsing experience.
Should we expect this browser to have more success than other tries (like Flock, which never really has been successful). Well, if you think that the persons behind the products do matter, you may want to know that Marc Andreessen, co-author of the first web browser Mosaic and co-founder of Netscape and of social media site Ning is backing Rockmelt. Despite this not being a guarantee for success, it is a guarantee for deep knowledge about both the browser and the social media territory. It will be interesting to follow the evolution of this new Internet baby.
Thanks for bringing this up. I am not sure that social browsers are the future, but it is an interesting development.