Man is a social animal, and it didn’t take him long to start thinking about a “social” browser.  Ever since the advent of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, numerous attempts have been made to integrate web-browsing with social networking. Unfortunately none of the ventures, which ranged from plug-ins for existing browsers to development of independent “social” browsers such as Flock, succeeded in satisfying the need for holistic integration.

   
However, now there is a new kid in town with a promise to bridge the gap between web browsing and social networking. RockMelt, the brain child of Tim Howes and Eric Vishria (ex-Opsware developers) is a browser designed solely for social interaction with features built directly into the browser just for this purpose.

According to the company’s official blog, RockMelt is designed to do more than just navigate web pages; instead it goes beyond the conventional and makes it “easy” for users to do the things they do every day on the internet, such as sharing and keeping up with friends, staying up-to-date on news information, and search etc.

Unlike the others RockMelt is the first “cloud” browser, i.e. its users will use their Facebook IDs to log into the browser. Since all the information is stored online, a user can access his/her personal RockMelt browser from any computer anywhere in the world. Thus RockMelt is currently the only browser that offers universal portability.  

Moreover the browser has the capability to automatically inform users of new stories, videos, or posts appearing on their favorite websites, without having to leave the current webpage. It tracks a user’s Facebook and Twitter account and keeps them updated aswell.  Moreover with its drag and drop feature the browser makes it relatively easy to share links, pictures, videos, search information.

RockMelt is built on Chromium, the open source project behind Google’s Chrome browser, and is relatively simplistic and clutter-free in its design. Facebook and Twitter connectors are built-into the browser’s layout, and can be customized.

In general the new platform has a lot of potential and can prove to be a trend setter. The Traffic team is currently evaluating the RockMelt and will publish an analysis shortly.