RockMelt Review
If you saw me open my inbox today, you probably saw some tears. Don’t worry, they were good tears. I knew my social media life was going to change, but I didn’t think it would change this much.
I got my RockMelt invitation today. For those of you who aren’t as nerdy as myself, RockMelt is the combination of an Internet browser and social media. It lets you conduct nearly everything you do on social media without leaving the page.
Here are the pros…
-Intuitive layout- This could have been crafted by the wiz kids at Apple for all I know. I didn’t read any manual or watch any videos about what to do. It just comes naturally. When you are designing a website, natural navigation is a big issue. RockMelt’s developers nailed it.
-Update capabilities- On the right side of the product, called the Edge (not U2’s guitarist), you can choose to add different sites from which you want to receive updates. For instance, I have multiple Twitter accounts showing on the Edge. Anytime an update comes across my feed, the Edge tells me how many updates for each site next to the corresponding icon. The icon pulls up a quick update menu, and I can decide whether I want to comment back. This is a huge feature to have. I no longer have to refresh feeds or go to new pages to get the information I require.
-Share features- You can now share any site you visit with your social media friends and followers with the ease of one click. Next to where you enter the URL, you simply click share. Next decide which account you want to share the site from, write a quick message, and consider it done. You no longer have to log in to that application to share your findings.
Here are the cons…
-Facebook heavy- The left side of RockMelt shows who’s available to chat on Facebook. I would prefer to choose what the left side does. As someone who rarely uses Facebook chat, I would rather have that bar show which friends have updated something recently or have a newsfeed that shows articles that I would be interested in reading. On the Edge, you can also add the Facebook icon, so it seems like the left side is a bit superfluous
-Nothing else…
All in all, the pros far outweigh the cons, and I can tell this product is a game-changer. It’s only in Beta at the moment, but I can tell that this is the next step in making social media an even more ingrained part of our lives. Join the Beta list today.
If you already have it and think I missed some pros or cons, leave me a comment… If you don’t have it and have some questions, just hit me back.
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Just a quick con: google extensions do not work correctly on Rockmelt (exemplified by Google Voice’s app) and have prevented me from integrating to rockmelt full time.
O, yay! I’ve been using RockMelt for about three days and so far, I love it. I admit to being something of a Facebook addict so it works perfectly for me. You can hide the left sidebar, or “friend edge” if you don’t want to use it for chat. I agree it would be nicer to be able to choose what it does though. It would also be nice to be able to hide edges in specific windows. At the moment, hiding an edge in one window will hide it in EVERY open window you have and whichever windows you open next. Your options are “always show” or “don’t show at all.”
Another thing that would be nice would be the ability to adjust the URL window or that whole area. If your window is not full screen, the URL bar shrinks, but the search bar is usually still full-sized. There is what looks like a spacer where you can adjust next to the “share” button, but it doesn’t move.
As far as Google extensions, so far, the ones I chose seem to work pretty well.
Overall, I love the browser and am using it full times when not on Ubuntu. The feeds are handy, the Facebook integration is fun and keeps me from having to switch windows all the time. I was previously using Flock, but the more they switched from Mozilla to Chrome, the more Flock started to suck. Half the features don’t even work anymore. RockMelt has killed them with being able to use Chrome as a base and make something useful. I will uninstalling Flock probably by next week.
Queen,
Thanks for providing your feedback. I too use RockMelt, and have used it since the initial launch. After a month or so plus, I am using the tool as more of a “Hootsuite” instead of a browser. Until they fix some of the issues involved with the edge, I will continue to use it as such. Your insight rocks. Thanks for joining in the conversation.
Steve