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Tag: RockMelt

  • Yahoo Buys Rockmelt, Acquisition Train Keeps A Rollin’

    Yahoo Buys Rockmelt, Acquisition Train Keeps A Rollin’

    Yahoo just announced that it has acquired Rockmelt, which you may remember launching a social browser a few years back. The browser was based on Chromium, but added a lot of social functionality that is for the most part already integrated into most of the content we consume on the web.

    “We have acquired Rockmelt, a company dedicated to make browsing the internet faster and more fun,” a Yahoo spokesperson tells WebProNews .”Yahoo! and Rockmelt share a common goal to help people discover the best content from around the web. We plan to integrate the Rockmelt technology into Yahoo!’s experiences, and the Rockmelt team will help us to reimagine how we deliver our media content in new and exciting ways.”

    Yahoo will be shutting down Rockmelt’s own apps on August 31st, and they’re no longer accepting new sign-ups. Rockmelt says in a blog post:

    Yahoo! and Rockmelt share a common goal: To help people discover the best content from around the web. In our short four and a half years at Rockmelt, we’ve learned a lot about how you like to browse the web, discover content, and share the great stuff you’ve found. You’ve been right by our sides as we’ve celebrated successes, endured failures, and invented new ways of doing things. You’ve taught us a ton. And we plan to put everything we’ve learned to work at Yahoo!.

    The truth is Rockmelt wouldn’t exist without you, our users. You showed us what it means to browse the web in today’s world. You made us go aww, lol, and hmm. And sometimes you confounded us, which gave us a good excuse to say wtf. Just by using Rockmelt, you made this opportunity possible. We can’t thank you enough for letting us into your daily lives and for believing in us. We will definitely keep you close to our thoughts, designs, and products in our new world.

    They also shared this photo of the Rockmelt team wearing all purple:

    Yahoo Buys Rockmelt

    Terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to All Things D, which has a reputation for gaining access to Yahoo insider info, puts the deal between $60 and $70 million.

  • Rockmelt Browser Gets New Facebook, Twitter Features in Beta 2

    The web browser market is as competitive as ever, as millions of people continue to download Firefox 4 and Microsoft and Google continue to improve Internet Explorer and Chrome respectively. Rockmelt, which puts the browsing experience on social – which most websites are already doing anyway, opened up to the public last month, and has now added even more social features.

    New features for Rockmelt, which is based on Chromium (the open source fondation of Google Chrome), include improved Facebook Chat and real-time Twitter functionality. These come in the Beta 2 version of the browser, which Rockmelt began rolling out today.

    It includes an all new Twitter app and a “view later feature, which appears as a function alongside the main URL field, allowing the user to bookmark a page, while tagging it to create running lists in the “View Later” app on RockMelt’s “App Edge.”

    Rockmelt new view later feature in beta 2

    Rockmelt new view later feature in beta 2
    The new beta lets users leverage the real-time Twitter API, and includes full capabilities to view @ replies, lists and direct messages and Twitter Search.

    As far as the Facebook Chat improvements, they’ve added a lightweight chat bar at the bottom of the browser window so users can easily keep tabs on multiple conversations at once.

    “Our founding goal was to re-imagine the browser,” said Eric Vishria, RockMelt’s co-founder and CEO. “We’re seeing unparalleled user engagement and the new functionality we’re rolling out will make it even easier and faster for users to consume and share content, and connect with friends, all within a discrete design that delivers rich functionality without being distracting.”

    Rockmelt also shared the following stats:

    – On average, RockMelt users are spending over six hours per day in the browser and are sharing content every two to three days

    – 65 percent of users have added multiple Apps to their App Edge

    – Users are engaging with the Apps in their App Edge more than 20 times per day

    – Users are having three chats via RockMelt per day

    – Half of RockMelt users have added at least one Twitter account

    Rockmelt Beta 2 includes support for Chromium 10, which includes speed improvements.

  • Flock Makes Upgrade To Chromium 7

    Flock Makes Upgrade To Chromium 7

    Social web browser Flock has released a new Chromium 7-based version of its browser on both Mac and Windows platforms.

    Flock says its new 3.5 version offers greater ease of use and faster performance, likely in response to its recently launched competitor RockMelt.  The company says it has reached an installed user base of  over 9.5 million users globally and calls itself “the social browser market leader.”

    Users of the browser can view their social content via a Flock Sidebar, which includes tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn status updates, RSS feeds, and YouTube and Flickr content.

    New Flock from Flockstar on Vimeo.

    “We’re seeing great overall growth in users and engagement, including 57 million new activities conducted within new Flock per day, and over 4 billion activities over the last four months,” said Shawn Hardin, president and CEO of Flock.

    “Our growth is 100% user-powered: 83 percent of our users say they have already recommended or intend to recommend the new Flock browser to their friends and family.”

    The new Flock browser has been cloud-based with an API since June 2010. Flock for the Mac supports Leopard and Snow Leopard OSX and will be available on December 1. The PC upgrade on Chromium 7 will automatically be updated for current New Flock users or can be downloaded.

     

  • Is This the Web Browser Experience People Want?

    Today, nearly everybody in the tech community is talking about a new web browser called RockMelt, just introduced over the weekend. The browser promises to make it "easy for you to do the things you do every single day on the web."

    This means sharing, keeping up with friends, staying up to date on news and information, and of course search. The browser is built on Chromium, the open source project behind Google’s Chrome.

    "Your friends are important to you, so we built them in," writes the RockMelt Team. "Now you’re able to chat, share that piano-playing-cat video everyone’s going to love, or just see what your friends are up to, regardless of what site you’re on. Your favorite sites are important to you, so we built them in too. Now you can access them from anywhere, without leaving the page you’re on. And RockMelt will tell you when something new happens."

    "Share or tweet links often?" the team continues. "Yeah, us too. No more wading through each site’s goofy share widget or copy-pasting URLs. We built sharing directly into the browser, right next to the URL bar. Like a site or story? Click “Share” and BAM – link shared. You can use it on any site to post to Facebook or tweet about it on Twitter. It’s  just one click away. That easy."

    RockMelt isn’t the first browser to place this kind of emphasis on social and sharing. This is the whole angle of Flock, which has been around for quite some time. In fact, back in the summer, Flock announced a redesign of its browser, which was originally based on Firefox, to a new Chromium-based version. 

    Right now, people can sign up for early access to RockMelt, but while it’s been two years in the making, the team says to expect some bugs because the browser is still a "baby". 

    While it’s hard to say if RockMelt will find mainstream adoption in an increasingly crowded web browser space with continuous enhancements among offerings from the big names like Google, Microsoft, and Apple and other established browsers like Firefox and Opera, the concepts behind RockMelt will be attractive to web users. 

    I’d expect to see more of these kinds of functionalities from the other existing browsers, particularly Chrome, given that not only is it also built on Chromium, but Google has said repeatedly that it will continue to build "social layers" upon its existing products. The browser seems like an obvious place to build such a layer. 

    There are plenty of add-ons out there for other browsers that can add these kinds of features, but RockMelt appears to just be reducing the friction between users and this kind of web experience.  

    Content providers should only benefit from the kinds of sharing features RockMelt promises. Regardless of what sharing buttons or widgets they offer on their own content, users will always have the option to share with their own networks of friends right at their fingertips. 

    Marc Andreessen, who started Netscape, is backing RockMelt, which was developed by Tim Howes and Eric Vishria.