Socialbrowse: Don't Surf Alone
Browsing the web is typically a very solitary activity, even if the Web 2.0 revolution has given us easy tools like FriendFeed or SocialMedian to share our online activities. However, a different breed of services like Browzmi or the Y Combinator funded Socialbrowse are trying to make the actual browsing experience more social by displaying your friends' actions right in the browser. Socialbrowse is releasing a new version of its service today which, besides being faster, lets you post any link directly to Twitter.
More Updates
Besides the closer integration with Twitter, Socialbrowse also switched from flat files to using SQLite as its database back-end. This, according to Socialbrowse co-founder Zack Garbow, resulted in a 10x speed increase over the old system.
Also, the sidebar now features a 'Hot' tab which displays the most popular and active shares or discussions in your network.
How Does it Work?
At the core of Socialbrowse is a Firefox extension that displays your friends' activity on the service in a sidebar. It's important to note that Socialbrowse does not aggregate your online actions the way FriendFeed does. Instead, Socialbrowse adds three icons to your Firefox navigation toolbar that let you toggle the sidebar, share and tag a site, or comment on it. Every time you share something or comment on a page, your updates will instantly appear in your friends' sidebars.
In this newest version of Socialbrowse, you can also send your links directly to Twitter to share it with your social network there. Interestingly, Socialbrowse is using its own URL shortener in these Twitter posts.
Sidebar
In the sidebar, you can chose to either see all of your friends' updates, or you can chose to only see their latest shares or comments. It would be nice if you could comment on a page as you are sharing it, but for now, Socialbrowse is keeping these two activities completely separate from each other.
Once you close your sidebar, you will still get update from your friends through little pop-ups at the bottom right of your screen. This is a nice feature, especially if you have a small screen and you don't want a sidebar to take up a lot of your space.
Ranking
One other interesting feature in Socialbrowse is its ranking system. You get a 'social point' every time one of your friends shares a link you discovered first. Based on this ranking, Socialbrowse then creates a list of highly active users that new users can chose to follow when they sign up.
Annotated Links
One really nifty feature of Socialbrowse is that it analyses every page you surf to and then adds little icons to links that your friends have already shared or commented on. As you hover over these icons, Socialbrowse will display a list of your friends and the comments they left. To us, this feature itself is worth the price of admission.
Invites
Socialbrowse is still in private beta, but Socialbrowse gave us 500 invitation to hand out to you. Just follow this link, sign up, and you will get an invitation immediately.
If you want to follow me on Socialbrowse, my profile is here.
Comments
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Love the SocialBrowse I was one of the first users , I also have few invites if anyone is interested in.
Invites:
http://www.livecrunch.com/2008/07/28/100-invites-for-socialbrowse-by-livecrunch/
Posted by: LiveCrunch | September 5, 2008 10:35 AM
I've been using Socialbrowse for a while now, and it's awesome. Makes it really easy to share/discover links, and the commenting feature is great -- you can actually discuss links with your friends without leaving the page you're on. Just from showing it to a few friends I can see how socialbrowse is going to spread really quickly. Great job guys.
Posted by: Andrew | September 5, 2008 10:38 AM
I love Socialbrowse. Been using it for a while. I love being able to comment on articles and discuss things with new people I meet on Socialbrose.
Posted by: Junker | September 5, 2008 11:00 AM
Wow. I think "Social" just jumped the shark.
Posted by: Bryan | September 5, 2008 11:14 AM
I'm a huge fan of SocialBrowse, I also have a bunch of invites left over so feel free to contact me if you want one. I've really come across some great stuff while using the service.
Posted by: Samir | September 5, 2008 11:34 AM
I've also been using Socialbrowse for a while, now, and it's really become a part of my daily browsingn habits. It's great! I'll say one thing: regarding keeping commenting separate from sharing, I think in some ways it's nice to be able to comment on something without necessarily giving it the legitimacy of a share. Anyway, I totally agree with Andrew in that this thing could really take off! My friends who use it are also loving it :)
Posted by: Natalie | September 5, 2008 12:02 PM
I love me some SocialBrowse! I can't imagine web surfing without it anymore. If you're looking for some of the most active people on SocialBrowse, check out this link: http://www.thattalldude.com/main/2008/09/active-socialbr.html We'll be sure to help you along on your journey to link sharing nirvana!
Posted by: Shawn Kirsch
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September 5, 2008 1:31 PM
Is it me? All of the comments look like they are coming from people within the company. Blog guys, respond to comments but ease up on the "I love this" stuff comments.
Posted by: Denis | September 5, 2008 1:41 PM
Social|Median is great... makes it easy to share and surf more than a handful of sites in minutes.
Posted by: ptamaro
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September 5, 2008 1:47 PM
I just installed it, wanted to see who else I know that's using it and they had the audacity to ask for my GMail password! WTF? That's what the Gmail Contacts API is for! So I don't have to do that! Hello, YCombinator startup - meet cutting edge technology, I'd have thought you two would have known each other already.
I'm a co-founder of Socialbrowse. We appreciate the great writeup and fantastic feedback.
@Denis, these comments aren't coming from people within the company (there only 2 of us), but many Socialbrowse users are coming across this article from within Socialbrowse. You'll find that good links spread through the system very quickly, from one user's network to the next - it's one of the many cool effects of browsing socially!
@Marshall, cutting edge technology and I are actually good friends :-) Just kidding, we're in the process of integrating the various APIs including Facebook Connect soon to make it even easier to find or invite friends. We've got a lot on our plates, so we haven't hit everything yet, but we're working on it. We don't store any passwords (but our own) so there's no need to worry, however there's no requirement for entering any data, so you can just skip it if you're concerned.
Posted by: Zack | September 5, 2008 2:08 PM
Loving the update. Very responsive, and the Twitter supports sounds great.
Posted by: Mattie | September 5, 2008 2:32 PM
i don't like social networking. i'm already alone. do you think i can survive in this world?
Posted by: yaratik | September 5, 2008 3:01 PM
Thanks Frederic. Wouldn't have stumbled upon socialbrowse if not for you. Which brings me to my point. socialbrowse is StumbleUpon on steroids. Share the juice, people, share the juice.
Posted by: Robert Stevens | September 5, 2008 4:48 PM
So I took your invite, and thank you for that (came here via http://socialmedian.com/) and I will check them out. :)
Posted by: Caers | September 5, 2008 6:40 PM
How did this get reviewed without comparison to Medium? It is a walled garden without any integration of other services, but the general idea is the same and they've been doing it for lots longer.
@Zack:
STFU and quit encouraging poor web security practice. When the API implementations are complete, go for it. You show ZERO RESPECT to your potential user-base.
Posted by: Tim | September 6, 2008 8:02 AM
I will try to use it in my searches. It looks like good
Posted by: giuseppe | September 6, 2008 8:12 AM
I agree with Tim. This sounds amazingly similar to Me.dium and I would have at least expected a mention.
I've installed socialbrowse on Firefox and now Firefox is running so slow that I had to switch to Safari. Is that just me or have other people experienced this as well? Anything I can do to keep the browser moving at faster than molasses speed?