Anyway, I generally agree with the spirit of your post, but as a fairly experienced software developer I wanted to address the plugin question and a few other technical issues. The Chrome API doesn't expose enough for RockMelt to be integrated as a plugin, at the very least from a user-interface standpoint. Extension developers don't have any real freedom to add permanent elements to the native Chrome interface – except for adding icons/buttons to the designated areas. It could be done in Firefox, but not in Chrome with its current model. Lets be honest, if RockMelt was just another "click the icon and tweet" or "click the icon and see your Facebook notifications" extension, it wouldn't even be newsworthy

Also, I believe you've made a false assertion with respect to a plugin being easier to update regularly than a browser – especially a Chromium-based browser, since it's built to silently and unobtrusively update on its own.

Those issues aside, your comments on Twitter support, shoddy importing (which seems fixed, but I would never consider tolerable outside of an early beta – it's not difficult to do right), and missing social networks and services are largely very correct, in my opinion, and as true today as they were when you originally posted.