If Facebook or Twitter were to build a Web browser, they’d make it like this. Rather than wait for that to happen, a startup company went ahead and built their own browser that has some interesting features. It’s called RockMelt and has some real positives and negatives:
So What’s Different About RockMelt and Why Should You Care?
- The browser resembles Google Chrome because it was built using the open-source Chromium Web browser code (which also powers Chrome) and meshes that code with Facebook, Twitter, and other RSS feeds. This makes it a socially-savvy Web browser that lets you browse and share information with friends without having to always copy, paste, shorten URLs, or even leave the browsing window. In fact, you can see in the gallery below that there’s a vertical bar showing all your online friends (on the left of the screen) whether they’re on Twitter or Facebook… and then on the right are some helpful sharing tools.
- It has features that don’t natively exist in Firefox, IE, Chrome, and the other big browsers. However, it would not be surprising to see all those browsers start incorporating some or all of RockMelt’s integrated browsing functionality. In other words, using RockMelt is like seeing what Web browsing will be like in 2011. Not 2020 or 2050, but just next year. In other words, the functionality is going to be adopted and adapted very quickly.
- It’s got Marc Andreessen, the co-creator of Mosaic, the first popular graphical Web browser, and founder of Netscape behind it. He’s got funding-based ties to Facebook and Twitter so hopefully RockMelt won’t hit too many speed bumps as it gains a bit of popularity.
Why It Won’t Work
It’s not all sunshine and lollipops though. According to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at ZDNet, privacy issues may proved to be the downfall of such a social network-based browser:
“I don’t think so. First, I’m not crazy about how social networks, particularly Facebook, invade privacy. Just to get on the beta list, I had to give permission to Rockport to access my public Facebook account information, the ability to send me e-mail, and–this is the one that really bugs me–the right to post messages, images and video to my Facebook wall. I don’t like giving any Facebook program this much power, never-mind just a tricked-out Web browser.”
RockMelt may have big aspirations (don’t all start-ups?) but it’s essentially just a couple fancy plug-ins incorporated with Google Chrome. While RockMelt seems to be a helpful way to chat and share without leaving your current web page, it will be interesting to see if people actually choose RockMelt as their default browser or if they simply try it (like they did with Flock) and discard it.
What do you think? Will you try RockMelt? Does it pose even more security or privacy concerns since it is so capable of sharing every bit of information you create while browsing? There are definitely some big problems and questions so I’ll be sure to update this post with your questions. Ask them in the comments or via Twitter by mentioning @edudemic!
[button link="http://www.rockmelt.com/" color="lightblue"]Visit the RockMelt site[/button]
The Multimedia Gallery of RockMelt
Don’t want to share your Facebook info in order to download the Web browser? Check out the video and image gallery below to see what it looks like and a bit more about how it works. I was sure to take screen shots of each step it took to set up the browser. Enjoy!
Click any image to start the gallery
