Review by Stacy Zemon
Have you been thinking that your Explorer, Firefox or Chrome browser just isn’t, say, social enough? Probably not, but RockMelt is hoping that’s exactly what you’ll think after you try out its web browser.
Recently released in a limited beta, it’s built entirely around social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Using Chromium at its core, the browser naturally looks and feels a lot Chrome.
The left edge integrates your Facebook friends so you can chat, send messages or check out status updates no matter what site you’re visiting.
The right column is meant for Twitter and RSS feeds — both are updated in the background and use “push notifications” to let you know how many unread messages or posts you’ve got piling up.
You can update your statuses from both rails as well as share the site you are reading by just hitting the large share button to the left of the search bar. It’s all fairly straightforward and actually works quite well.
However, RockMelt is pitching itself as more than just a sharing platform — it also claims to have improved the speed and ease of search.
Instead of the search box taking you to a Google search page, it brings up the results in a box of its own and allows you to visit the different sites within the browser window — basically, you don’t have to keep clicking back and forth from that Google search page. It’s fairly neat, and actually does seem rather snappy.
So, when can you try out RockMelt yourself? I wish I had better news, but it’s in a limited beta for both Mac and PC, so your best bet is to connect with them on Facebook for an invitation. You’ll have to give away your FB details (if you’re cool with forking over that info), but based on my first impression, it’s definitely worth putting your name in the running. Watch the video and decide for yourself!
