A new browser — built with social networking at the forefront — has come on the scene, and the folks from the “Netscape Mafia” are banking on the explosion of social media and our insatiable desire to be constantly connected through those networks.
A group of Netscape alumni founded and financed RockMelt, the company, and the release of their new browser comes 16 years after Netscape introduced the first commercial Internet browser.
“We think it is a fantastic time to build a company around a browser,” said Marc Andreessen, Netscape co-founder and principal financial backer through his venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz.
RockMelt, the browser, lets users experience the Web, especially the social Web, without the hassle of the back-and-forth toggling that other browsers require. Sure, tabs are great, and we’ve come quite adept at speeding in, out, and around our top picks, but imagine if you could do the same all more efficiently and with a much higher level of interconnectedness.
CEO Eric Vishria did just that.
“The thing that really led us to this was the observation that the typical Web user only visits five to seven unique websites,” he said. “Like they only visit a handful of websites and they visit them multiple times a day, basically going back polling for updates. And to us, the thing that didn’t make sense about that is it’s 2010 and the browser isn’t, like, intelligent enough to understand that I do the same thing 10 times a day — just to have that content ready and waiting for me. And that’s what we’ve tried to do here.”
Currently, users can “reserve a spot” on the beta list via their Facebook account. In the future, all users will be required to log in to Facebook as a gateway to the browser — the social’s baked right in. RockMelt joins a roster of also-rans in the browser game. Flock, released in 2003, has many of the same features but came out before social media hit big. Chrome, backed by Google and promoted to millions daily, has only eight percent market share.
I’ve got my beta and will be test-driving this browser, putting it through the paces to determine if I’m ready to change. What do you think? Would you make the change to a new and different browser if it made your social (media) life easier?