Why RockMelt Has Stolen My Heart

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Dear Google Chrome

We’ve been together for the best part of 18 months and they’ve undoubtedly been the best of my (internet) life. When I met you I was disillusioned with my (browser) relationships and you brought sunshine to my world (of search). You lifted me from the gloom of my first relationship with Explorer and my exciting but unfulfilling flirtation with Firefox that promised so much but ultimately delivered so little. You live life in the fast lane, you allow me to be myself and when I met you I thought we’d be together forever.

But I’ve met someone else.

I wasn’t looking for a new relationship, and I’ve been very happy with you. But they were introduced to me recently by a friend and we immediately hit it off. At first I resisted the charms of their beautiful logo, but as I spent more time with them, I couldn’t help but fall for them. You’re as fast and swish as you ever were, and I love the way that you make my (web) life a pleasure. It’s just that this new browser is exciting and pretty and dynamic. It makes me feel special. Its name is RockMelt.

RockMelt is new to the area and is the first truly social browser I’ve met. It connects me with my Facebook friends like nothing I’ve ever know via a social sidebar, and it allows me to instantly update my Facebook profile or Tweet direct from the browser. I can post on walls, message people and chat without even visiting Facebook or Twitter – it’s so simple and it makes my (social web) life easy. And because this is all within a defined frame around the browser itself, it means that if I’m on a website or a blog and I have a thought, I can instantly share that thought together with a link to the page I’m viewing. If I share to Facebook, it embeds a thumbnail of the page and a link as you’d expect. If I share to Twitter, it formats to a tweet. RockMelt is new and shiny and is perfectly suited to my (social web) needs. As much as I love you, Chrome, you just can’t do that.

What I like most about RockMelt, however, aside from its beautiful appearance and its sexy attitude, is another of its sidebars, the feed bar. I can add feeds from my social networks, but I can also add RSS feeds from any web page or blog to the bar at the click of a button. It’s like your own cousin Chrome, Google Reader, on steroids, and it allows me to see which of my favourite blogs have been updated instantly. Sure it doesn’t yet have the functionality of Reader and I can’t tag or keep posts unread for later when I’ve viewed the stream. But I’d imagine that can’t be far away.

I know this may hurt you, Chrome, and this isn’t easy for me to say, but I see a lot of you in RockMelt. It’s as fast as you are and it uses the same customisable, tabbed browsing that you wooed me with all those months ago. I think that’s why I’ve been enticed, as RockMelt is just like you. Except more sophisticated. It’s not the finished article yet – it’s Twitter functionality is limited, there are tweaks that need to be made to the Facebook integration and the RSS reader needs to become more functional. But it’s very early days in our relationship.

I’ve been very happy with you, Chrome, and have loved the time I’ve spent with you. I’ve learned so much and it’s something I’ll never forget. It’s not you, it’s me. I’ve changed and I’ve realised that I want something new, exciting and sexy. I wish you all the best, but I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with RockMelt.

I’m sorry.

All my love

Paul xx




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