

Socialbrowse (YC Winter 08): Don't Surf Alone - thingsilearned
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/socialbrowse_dont_surf_alone.php

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unalone
I don't want to sound like a grumpy old man (I'm a bit young to be old, I'd
hope), but all this newfangled attention on "social" seems a bit misleading.
Social shouldn't be a constant distraction. It should be more laid-back. More
fine-tuned.

I love Facebook, but I love it because it helps tie together my campus: before
I started college last month, I'd given up Facebook as a needless distraction.
Now there's a relevant use for it. Similarly, this isn't doing anything other
than wasting my focus even further. It's like StumbleUpon only it's always in
the sidebar and it updates without my clicking a button.

I'd love to see somebody devilsadvocate me, though. I'd like to see a good
argument as to why something like this is not only useful but important.

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garbowza
As you point out, "social" can be done multiple ways: as a distraction or as a
true value add. And I completely agree with you, it must be laid back and
natural to be effective. That was our goal from the start for Socialbrowse:
not to change your browsing behavior, but to enhance the way you already
browse, and improve the sites you like to visit.

Socialbrowse is realtime, but doesn't require your attention. It's like a
human powered RSS stream, so you can pick and choose which links you take or
conversations you participate in. Or you can choose to ignore them completely
if you're busy. We developed Socialbrowse to be there when you want it, but
not to interfere when you don't. That's why it feels very non-intrusive, yet
when you take it away, the web feels lonely again.

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unalone
I haven't tried Socialbrowse, since I haven't messed with Firefox. But is
there anything that happens visually when you get new stories, or do you
manually refresh it? Because I'd imagine that there's something that catches
your eye and distracts you when you get new information.

I might check it out, though. You have the right view on the issue, and that's
a good thing.

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garbowza
The sidebar feed is updated automatically in real time. You can close the
sidebar at any time, and receive small notifications in the corner of your
screen, or you can toggle updates off completely. I do encourage you to try it
out for yourself!

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furiouslol
You know... I don't really like the idea of sharing my browsing activities
with my friends. It just feels creepy. It makes me feel self-conscious about
what websites I _can_ visit. If I want to share a site with you, i'll let you
know via email or IM. Having said that, I do like the annotated links feature.

Sharing music with friends is great though. I thought the best aspect about
Napster wasn't the fact that you can get any song you want online but that you
can peep inside your friends' hard drive and see what songs they have.

The current soclal music apps like Last.fm just doesn't feel as lively as
Napster was.

Having said that, doing a Napster now would be a bad idea. I don't think
anyone would bother to download a software to share music when there's sites
like imeem.

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thorax
SB is more like IM. With this addon you don't have to share anything at all if
you don't want. It's just a single button-click to do so, though, for any site
you like.

It just makes it easier to send it than email if your friends are also on
SocialBrowse (or Twitter now).

~~~
furiouslol
Oh I see. So it's different from Me.dium.

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thorax
Liking the new performance. Glad you were able to work in the SQLite support.

Now all we need is a way to get a Chrome extension...

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whacked_new
A skim of the article reminds me of me.dium, and I had trouble finding that
name, after forgetting it for long enough. Maybe SB is different (I don't know
-- I'm not the target market)?

