The Wall Street Journal
A Silicon Valley start-up is entering one of the most hotly contested software markets—Web browsers—with a strategy to integrate social networking and other features that have changed the way people use the Internet.
The closely held company, RockMelt Inc., is backed by investors that include Marc Andreessen—who helped develop and popularize the first widely used browser—and William Campbell, a veteran technology executive who is chairman of Intuit Inc. and a board member of Apple Inc.
RockMelt, which is to release a test version of its software on Monday, is entering a market dominated by Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Foundation's Firefox, Google Inc.'s Chrome browser and Apple's Safari. The start-up hopes to differentiate its product with some fundamental technical differences.
One is that RockMelt isn't only software. It comes with an Internet service that the company will operate and use to funnel updated information to users.
They must log into the software, using their credentials from Facebook Inc. The design allows information about friends from the popular social network to appear without having to keep returning to Facebook.
A selection of a user's Facebook friends remains on one edge of the browser, making it easy to send instant messages to them or share videos or other items by dragging it to that portion of the screen, said Eric Vishria, RockMelt's co-founder and chief executive. Another key feature, he said, is that updates from news sites are pushed constantly to the browser, so users don't have to keep visiting those sites for the latest information.
"The way people use the Web has changed dramatically over the years, but browsers haven't changed much," Mr. Vishria said. RockMelt "brings the browser into this decade," he said.
The company has links to a prior decade of browser wars. Its co-founder, Tim Howes, worked in the late 1990s at Netscape Communications, the company co-founded by Mr. Andreessen that pioneered the browser market until overtaken by Microsoft. He and Mr. Vishria later worked at Loudcloud, a company led by Mr. Andreessen and Ben Horowitz that was renamed Opsware and sold to Hewlett-Packard Co.
Andreessen Horowitz is the lead investor in RockMelt, which has raised $10 million. Other investors, besides Mr. Campbell, include Diane Greene, former chief executive of software maker VMWare Inc., and Ron Conway, a well-known Silicon Valley investor.
Charlene Li, an analyst at the market-research firm Altimeter Group, said that a company called Flock Inc. previously introduced a browser targeted for social-networking applications and has failed to make much headway. On the other hand, she said, the rise of Chrome—which offered tighter integration of Google's search functions than competing products—indicates that users remain open to trying new browsers with the right features.
"This is not going to be everyman's browser," Ms. Li said of RockMelt. But the ability to make browsing a more shared experience with a user's Facebook friends could be a powerful draw to some people, she said.
RockMelt plans to give away the browser. Mr. Vishria said the company has no immedate plans for generating revenue, but he said future options include receiving payments for referrals from search engines, an income source for other browser makers.
