November 2010
I have been playing with Rockmelt (Social Browser) for few days. I really want to say that I liked the idea/concept of social browser and it is a great time saver for me.
Actually, being social does not make me productive at all, but the other great thing about RockMelt is it’s right side bar which includes/will-include little applications for popular websites. Right now there are just 2 real applications (facebook and twitter) and all other icons are just RSS readers.
I think this widget/app concept will make RockMelt very powerful. Every icon shows little number if there is something you should be notified as IPhone does. For example, I have facebook, twitter, cnn and some other blogs’ widgets on my right side bar. When there is something new in these websites, I can immediately see this while I am surfing on a random website.
Actually, all these concepts/ideas do not really sound unique to me. RockMelt looks like Chromium OS in Regular OS except it’s facebook modification. Let me explain some of the similarities and differences they have.
I think that the main reason that both companies created their own browser is single-sign-on market. I want to call this market, because every other thing on web era will depend on their share on this market. Both companies are trying to gain more power on this market. If you have more users you get more developers, If you have more developers, you get more users. This is unavoidable and this is their REAL competition.
To be able to use Chromium OS, you need a Google Account which means that you have to be an active Google User while you are using your computer/laptop. Also for RockMelt, you need a Facebook account which is basically the same thing.
But just having active users is not enough, they need a platform for developers. So developers can create their own applications based on these users bases. Google has it’s own Authentication Api, and Facebook has Facebook Connect.
This is the place where we see their competition these days. They both do not want to share your most important information which is your contacts, with anyone. Because they know that you will choose your platform (Chromium OS/Rockmelt) based on how many important people you can communicate on these accounts (Google/Facebook).
Google knows your contacts form your mail (gmail) and your phone (Android/contact sync). On the other hand, Facebook knows your Friends. We still do not know which one is more important for users. We care most about our friends but we mostly/daily-bases communicate with other people.
In Chromium OS, you have your gtalk buddies and in RockMelt you have Facebook Friends. IM is already integrated to browser in both of them.
Gmail is the default mail application in Chromium OS, and Facebook is creating their own messaging (SMS + MAIL) system. Facebook easily can integrate this system with RockMelt.
Facebook already has a huge platform which has a thousands of applications. These applications can be integrated to RockMelt and they can be sold in “RockMelt’s App Store” Also, Google is creating “Web App Store” which is basically the default App Store of Chromium OS
This is the real bet, because everything in the internet depends on how fast it spreads. Creating a browser based OS is really cool concept, but it is really hard to implement to the real world in near future and it has very limited users compared to the all browser users.
But Rockmelt is just a peace of software which can run on different platforms (windows/mac). Therefore, It will spread really fast. And in this game time is really important.
Google made Chrome just to make web more fast and easy. Then they created the Chromium OS just for netbook users. I think Google have not really realized the power of single-sign-on on the web until these months. Google created something really cool but they did not see the power of this new thing.
Facebook saw the future of the web because of Google Chromium OS, and they just insert this ides into browser which can work on almost all OSes. This is a really big avantage for Facebook.I think they will never create OS, because in the practical-world/or-near-future nobody will change their regular OS with browser based simple OS.
But facebook will absolutely create some type of mobile software/os/platform to implement this idea on mobile platform as Google did.
P.S. This is my very first blog post. Please leave me a comment. That’s why I share my thoughts.
Thank you for reading.