Mfarhanonline Social Media News: Social web browser RockMelt started rolling out RockMelt Beta 2 on Friday. The new version is the “most significant update” yet to the Chromium-based web browser and it touts better chat, more robust Twitter integration and a new “view later” feature. RockMelt co-founder Eric Vishria walked us through the new updates and offered us some information about who is using RockMelt and where the browser is headed. When RockMelt launched in November 2010, the goal was to create a tool that would integrate social networks and feeds directly in the web browser. Our first brush with the browser left us with a lukewarm impression, but the concept, at the very least remained interesting. Tools like Flock and RockMelt face an uphill battle of balancing social functionality without making the core browsing experience sub-optimal. In that regard, Vishria told us that the team spent a lot of time looking at ways to make the interface and the interactions more seamless and less confusing. The biggest UI overhaul is related to RockMelt’s popular integrated Facebook Chat feature. Chat Gets Better Vishria told us that RockMelt users use the built-in chat tool at least three times a day. With RockMelt Beta 2 , the team has added a new chat bar at the bottom of the browser window. This bar lets users stay involved in multiple conversations at once. Each conversation can be parked in its own window or chat bar tab when users are browsing the web. The best feature is the new notifications — very similar to Growl notifications in Mac OS X. When a chat window is minimized, users can still keep tabs on what is happening by way of an unobtrusive overlay. Better Twitter Client RockMelt says that 50% of its users have added at least one Twitter account to the browser. One of the biggest areas of user feedback was related! to the Twitter app that RockMelt uses. Thus, RockMelt redesigned the app to provide a better interface and to more deeply integrate into the Twitter API. The new Twitter app supports the real-time Twitter API and also supports Twitter search. View it Later Vishria told us that users are increasingly using bookmarks less — or not bookmarking content at all. Instead many users choose to save links to services like Instapaper , Readability , Pinboard and Read It Later . The advantage here is that content can be accessed for later consumption, which seems to be what users are doing more of, rather than bookmarking full sites for future reference. Inspired by some of these services, RockMelt decided to build the ability to view a site, article, video or update later. A new View Later button was added next to the bookmark icon in the URL window. Clicking this icon will add a URL to a running list tagged “View Later.” This list can be accessed via the RockMelt App Edge in its own app. The service differs from tools like Instapaper in that it isn’t just for text, it can be used for videos, music, status updates — anything in the browser. Right now there isn’t a way to export any of that View Later data to other services or to integrate other services with View Later. Vishria told us that the company is planning on addressing some of those issues in the future, but for now wants a solid browser-integrated experience. I do hope the company considers taking advantage of the Instapaper or Readability APIs and at least importing the content from those services to View Later. That could be a killer feature in its own right. The new RockMelt is based on Chromium 10, which means it should be faster and more stable. The RockMelt team is pushing out the update to a few users now and everyone should have access to Beta 2 by next week. RockMelt still might be the right browser for me, but for its userbase, the new version looks like a solid update with some compelling new features. Have you used! RockMel t? What do you think of custom browsers? More About: Browsers , facebook chat , RockMelt , software , twitter For more Tech & Gadgets coverage: Follow Mfarhanonline Tech & Gadgets on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad Social Media reviews series maintain by Mayya
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