RockMelt: Is the New Social Browser for You?

NOV. 8, 2010— -- The Web browser is getting social.

Launched in beta today, a new browser called RockMelt connects with Facebook to make it easier for Web users to share news, pictures, searches and more with their friends – all without ever leaving the browser window.

Backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who, as an engineer, became famous for introducing the Netscape browser in the mid-1990s, the RockMelt founders say their new service "re-imagines" a Web user's entire browsing experience.

"We really view this as a browser for modern Web users, folks who kind of live their lives online and spend time communicating with their friends online. They use the Web as a primary way to catch their news, they search really frequently," said Eric Vishria, RockMelt's co-founder and CEO. "It's really for a wide variety of people."

When you first load RockMelt, which is built on top of the same open-source platform that supports Google's Chrome browser, it asks you to log in with your Facebook information.

Once you're in the browser, you do not just see the typical search box, you see a vertical strip on the left with your Facebook friends and another on the right with widgets for Facebook, Twitter and other favorite Web applications.

As you search for content, read news stories, watch videos and more, you can share your online experience with friends without leaving the main screen. To send a video link to a friend, for example, you can just click on the video, drag it on top of the friend's picture and then choose to post it on his or her Facebook wall.

"It's the first browser that you log into," Vishria said. "By virtue of logging into the browser, you unlock the entire experience – friends, bookmarks, preferences. …Everything that makes your browser yours."

He also said that since RockMelt is the first browser that's backed by a set of servers in the cloud, a user can log on from home, work or a friend's computer and pick up where he left off the last time he was online.