Rockmelt, a new social media driven web browser, has caused some hype in the social-media world in the last few weeks. Today I finally got my hands on a copy of it, and my first impressions were not great. I’m gonna discuss a few features I really see this browser lacking.
Disclaimer: I am not saying this browser sucks, I just want to point out some negative features that are most likely going to keep me from using it, for now. I might post a consecutive post with my features I do like
Direct Chrome Plugin:
First off, I am not a developer. I don’t know how programs are written, and the process it takes. But RockMelt was developed with Google Chrome as the backend. Now as a Chrome user, I have plenty of plugins and bookmarks all nicely organized.  To utilize all my Chrome plugins I already use, I need to go and reinstall all of them.  How much harder would it be to have RockMelt installed into an existing Google Chrome as a plugin? Also, it must be using an old version of Chrome because I can’t sync my bookmarks and info to my Google Chrome.
Only 2 Social Networks:
I understand that development is early for this, and new features will come out over time (which makes having it as a plugin much easier to update).  But something I see lacking is that Facebook and Twitter are the only social networks supported for posting to. I would love to see some features that would allow me to post to other social sites including, but not limited to:
- Posting to this blog (WordPress)
- Facebook page support
- Share to open FB chat
- Email (not social, but would be nice)
- Digg
- Posterous
(Is it just me, or is it impossible to just update your status to your social networks? I can’t find a box to just type a new status for Facebook or Twitter.)(Okay, I figured out how to do this, you click the little picture on the top left.)
Also, I find it very annoying that if you are chatting with someone via Facebook chat in RockMelt, and also on Facebook.com, your chat opens twice.
Google Reader
I don’t know what you all use for your RSS readers, but I use Google Reader for my feeds. Now with RockMelt, they have RSS support built right in. Â The reason I use GReader is that I am able to access my feeds anywhere, and they update that I read them. Â If I read a few posts on my phone, then come back to my computer, and see that I have those same posts unread on RockMelt, that seems a bit redundant. I want to have everything synced for me.
Twitter Support
I am an avid Twitter user, and I really feel that features in their Twitter “app” do not offer many of the features that I would like to see and that my other Twitter apps offer. Â Some of those features are:
- Conversation View
- Old RT feature
- Update profile
- Location Support
- User Profile View (you can’t even view a profile inside the app!)
- Twitter Search (You can only search the tweets of those you follow)
- Lists
(I better stop here, but there are more)
Import
This might just be a bug, but RockMelt couldn’t even pull in my settings from Google Crome propperly.  My bookmarks bar and other bookmarks were all jacked up and I now have to go in and redo them all manually.
Overall
This browser could really be successful over the years, but they need to really figure out a few things. Anyone from RockMelt, I am more then happy to discuss with you these in detail if it could help with the overall application. Â I really see that RockMelt could be a great browser (plugin) to the already amazing Google Chrome.
What are you thoughts on RockMelt, or would you like to try it out? I have a few invites I could send out, so let me know! Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Steve
I agree with you Steve. I think the concept for this browser would fit into Chrome as a plug-in quite nicely. I also think, however, that since this browser is still in the "invite only" stage, that Google is mainly looking for feedback on the product so they can have a nice final product that can be released to the masses. I think Rockmelt is a really good Idea, and also agree it needs work. I am excited to see what they can do with it in the future, though.
Half a year too late – although RockMelt is still not as robust as it should be (has decent Facebook/Twitter/RSS support, should have available options for everything Flock 2.0 did, LinkedIn, and GoogleTalk would be nice).
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.