By Alexandra Krensky

At this point, you’ve learned how to engage with social media like Facebook, microblog with Twitter, and keep up with the latest news and your colleagues with RSS feeds. Now there’s a browser that can help you to keep up with all of them at once! RockMelt is an open-source browser based on Chromium, the same browser Google Chrome is based on. RockMelt is designed to integrate social networking into your web browsing by making it so that you don’t need to leave the page you’re reading to get updates.

When you login to RockMelt, it will ask for your Facebook login information so that it can integrate seamlessly with the social networking site. On the left side of your screen a toolbar (pictured below) shows you how many new Facebook, Twitter, or RSS feed posts you have. 

As you can see, when you click on the Facebook icon (or any other icon) you can see your feed without having to navigate away from the page you are currently browsing. The right side of the screen will show Facebook friends who are online, and allow you to chat with them, also without leaving your current page.

Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds integrate with RockMelt, but because the browser is so new and social media is constantly evolving, you should keep up with their blog in order to stay up to date on the latest updates.

Tasks

• Download RockMelt and login with with your institutional Facebook username and password.
• Subscribe to RSS feeds through RockMelt’s interface (see Resources). Try any archives blogs you may have subscribed to in Thing 4.

Blog Prompts

• Write about your experience using RockMelt.
• Do you find it helpful to browse this way?
• Is this something you’d use primarily yourself, or would you use it for work too?
• Are there other types of social media you’d like to see integrated into the browser?

Resources

• RockMelt’s blog
• RockMelt’s Twitter feed
• RockMelt’s YouTube channel
• “Accel, Khosla, and Andreessen Horowitz Pour Another $30 Million Into Social Browser RockMelt” article on TechCrunch (posted June 28, 2011) [FYI-Marc Andreessen, of Andreessen Horowitz, founded Netscape and is a major backer of RockMelt, Accel Partners and Khosla Ventures are also major backers of RockMelt]
• CrunchBase profile of RockMelt (last edited July 22, 2011)
• Mashable.com articles:
• “Meet RockMelt, the Social Savvy Browser” (posted November 7, 2010)
• “Is RockMelt the Social Web Browser We’ve Been Waiting For” (posted November 8, 2010)
• “Facebook Collaborates with Social Browser RockMelt” (posted June 14, 2011)
• “RockMelt” article on Wikipedia
• “Web Browsing Takes a Social Turn” article on The New York Times.com (posted November 8, 2010).