There’s been flood of news coverage in the past day of RockMelt, a new Web browser that’s just opening to the public (in the sense that you can now request an invite). The response isn’t surprising, since the founders have big ambitions and have been validated with funding from Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape.
But there’s been some backlash too, in part because some of RockMelt’s promises sound awfully familiar.
When I met with co-founders Eric Vishria (chief executive) and Tim Howes (chief technology officer) last week, they argued that Web browsers haven’t evolved to match the way we use them now — older browsers are still designed as if the core Web experience involves navigating from website to website, rather than interacting with friends.
It’s a compelling argument, but it sounds rather similar to social browser Flock. There are also similarities to browser plug-ins like Mozilla's Ubiquity and Vysar's RoamAbout, which aren’t full-scale browsers, but also allowed users to access their social connections and Web services wherever they were on the Web. None of these products seems like a huge success — Flock has its fans, but it hasn’t exactly shaken up the browser market; Mozilla stopped work on Ubiquity; and the RoamAbout website hasn’t been updated since 2009.
Can RockMelt succeed where these other companies have failed? Andreessen apparently thinks so — his firm Andreessen Horowitz led the company’s recent funding. (RockMelt has raised $9.9 million total.) And I was very impressed by what I saw last week.
The browser has three main components.
- Friends Sidebar - On the left side of the page, there’s a sidebar with a list of your top Facebook friends (as chosen by you), showing their updates on Facebook and Twitter and their availability for Facebook Chat. You can also use that sidebar to post content to Facebook or Twitter. On the right side, there’s another sidebar listing your favorite websites and alerting you whenever they’re updated (determined mostly by their RSS feeds).
- Search Box - And on the top, there’s a box with an improved search experience. Normally, when I search for something, I’ll open three or four tabs with different results, because I’m not sure which one has what I’m looking for. RockMelt opens a column of results, and as you scroll down, the relevant webpage will open in the background. All of the pages are pre-rendered, so you should be able to scroll seamlessly, without waiting for each one to load.
- Chromium Integrated - RockMelt is built on top of Chromium, the open source project behind Google’s Chrome browser.
Of course, things usually work better in the company demo, so I tried to play with RockMelt on my own computer. Unfortunately, it seems to be stalling right now, so I have nothing to report but annoyance. Judging from remarks on Twitter, it’s working on other computers, or at least it was earlier. [Update: After quitting and restarting the browser several more times, it finally started working properly. Vishria said the company is "seeing this issue sporadically as we add new users."]
One thing that will turn off at least a few users is the extent of RockMelt’s integration with Facebook. Not only does the browser allow you to log into your Facebook account, it actually requires you to do so before you can do anything else. Vishria and Howes emphasized that, as a startup, they had to focus their initial efforts on the biggest players, and that there’s nothing in the architecture that would prevent them from adding other services later on. So non-Facebook users are out of luck for now. But the use of Facebook as the default log-in on the Web and on phones is spreading, so I don’t think this will be a huge hurdle.
The bigger question is whether users are really looking for this kind of social browser, or if Silicon Valley types are trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
Personally, I expect to make RockMelt my default Web browser (once I get it working), because I spend a lot of time monitoring social networking and news sites as part of my job. Being able to receive immediate alerts (that I can ignore if I’m busy with something else) rather than reloading Web pages would make me more efficient. But I’m curious if other users feel the same way — or if they’ll see RockMelt’s features as a huge distraction.
COMMENTARY: Like VentureBeat, I registered using my Facebook account and login information. Nothing happened right away, but if you click on the BACK button a message appears confirming your registration and that you will be notified "soon" to access RockMelt.
Just from viewing the RockMelt's website video demonstration, I would have to say that this browser is quite different than other web browsers like Internet Explorer, Safari or Google Chrome. The demo in VentureBeat's page (same as RockMelt's website) went too fast, is too brief and does not provide a richer, fuller description of RockMelt's features and capabilities. The YouTube video below, does a much better jobs.
You can log into RockMelt using your Facebook account, but this is not necessary, although you will lose many of its cool social browser features. RockMelt's integration with Facebook permits you to view the updates of your friends, including any images or videos they attached to their updates, add new friends, post Wall comments and you can add a thumbnail of your favorite Facebook friends to the left sidebar. Another cool feature is RockMelt's ability to display new updates to your Facebook and Twitter accounts
RockMelt uses the Google search engine and receives regular updates to insure that it is in sychronization. What's really cool is that RockMelt is much faster than the Google search engine because search results can be viewed immediately, instead of the user having to click on the link for each search result, waiting for the site to load, then repeat the same process to view the next search link.
You search for websites just like you would other web browsers Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, by entering a URL, name of the site, or topic. If you visit the same site regularly, RockMelt will prompt you if you would like that site to a favorites list. Favorites appear as icons on the sidebar located on the right side.
RockMelt also provides a share feature, so that you can easily share any site webpage with your Facebook and Twitter friends.
What I really like about RockMelt is that it also integrates with Twitter, allowing you to view and add tweets, retweets and followers, and so forth. Not sure if RockMelt integrates with any other social sites like MySpace or YouTube.
Unlike other browsers, RockMelt does not store any browsing or search history, but it saves your Facebook and Twitter friends, favorite sites, and so forth. In its present beta form, RockMelt lacks social network check-in service integration like Facebook Places or Foursquare so that you can GPS-track your Facebook or Twitter friends in real-time. Let's say you are on Starback's homepage, RockMelt would tell you if one of your Facebook or Twitter friends is at that location.
RockMelt is based on the Chromium open source engine used in developing Google's Chrome web browser and uses one of the top rendering engines for its searches.
You keep hearing about social search engines, but I find the idea of a social browser very compelling. It would be wise for Google to look into the new RockMelt social browser because of its obvious commonality with Chromium. It could be a great fit.
The RockMelt founders admit that their browser is still a work-in-process and that they are just scratching the surface of what browsers will eventually look like in another ten years.
Courtesy of an article dated November 8, 2010 appearing in VentureBeat
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