RockMelt Social Web Browser Revealed

By Jim Rapoza 11/13/2010 RockMelt, a new browser backed by Mosaic and Netscape web pioneer Marc Andreessen, tightly integrates web browsing with social networking, letting users easily track their Facebook friends, Twitter feeds and changing news feeds, while surfing the web. RockMelt is not the first attempt to reimagine the web browser as a social tool. Back in 2005, the Flock browser was released with similar ambitions. Initially based on Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine, the forthcoming 3.0 version of Flock will, like RockMelt, be based on Google's Chromium browser engine. Despite being just an early preview release, RockMelt offers some of the best social networking features we've seen in a browser and could already be considered one of the best browser choices for heavy Facebook users. And with its Chrome heritage, it is already strong as a standard web browser. Here's a look at some of the key features of the recently released early preview of RockMelt.

Facebook Integration

When you first launch the RockMelt browser, it asks for your Facebook login information. Once it starts, it automatically logs into Facebook and integrates Facebook information directly into the browser interface. This includes a list of Facebook friends (show with small image thumbnails) that runs down the left hand side of the browser window.

This listing could be customized to show favorites, which are selected simply by hitting a star next to the person's image. Clicking on a friend's thumbnail displayed their most recent status and provides the option to chat with that person or post on their wall.

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