RockMelt: A Chrome-based Browser for the Facebook Generation

RockMelt is a new web browser based on Chromium (by Google) and tightly integrated with the social web, particularly Facebook. This 2.5 minute video gives a short overview.

As Michael Calore writes in his article “First Look at RockMelt, a Browser Built For Facebook Freaks” for Wired, many of the ideas of RockMelt have been tried previously in browsers like Flock which facilitate sharing on the social web. It looks like RockMelt will take an even more integrated approach, however, creating dynamic, browser-based information flows which remind me of FlipBoard on the iPad. If you use RockMelt or ANY other tool to access your Facebook account on unsecured wireless network, remember the dangers posed by Firesheep and take precautions accordingly. It’s amazing to see the process of sharing online continue to get easier and more powerful. Posterous is my favorite example of this currently, and a tool I feature in my conference breakout session, “Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing.”

RockMelt is available as a public beta, folks interested in giving it a try can sign up on the RockMelt website. I guess I’ll be adding RockMelt to my standard browser menu (at least for awhile) which already includes Chrome, FireFox, and Safari. (I completely ditched Internet Explorer many months ago.)