Browzmi: Live Social Browsing

With everything on the web going social nowadays, you can expect to see all sorts of web applications to have a social networking feature. The main goal of the social feature is mainly for users to interact with each other while using a web service or application.


Browzmi is a unique and interesting social networking service. It is a mix of social networking and browsing. It is a combination of a lot of online tools: a social sharing/bookmarking site, Instant messenger and a browser. Browzmi is a browser within your browser which can be quite confusing if you describe it like that but it’s exactly what it is. It’s a web app that acts as a browser which is equipped with instant messaging. This allows members to share with each other what they are browsing in Browzmi.

The browser within the web app is a unique way of sharing URL’s to your friends. You can either use Browzmi to surf the web or use their Firefox plugin to easily transfer a URL from your original browser to Browzmi. This will allow you to quickly share a page in just a click. The plugin, “Browzmi Homebase,” allows the web service to connect to your browser and allow web traffic to bypass their servers. When I tested it without the plugin, some sites are missing some widgets and some CSS failed to load. After installing the plugin, the sites that I visited worked perfectly.

The service functions more of an instant messenger than a screen sharing site. Browzmi’s goal is for friends to discover websites and share them with each other in real time. This is made possible by the “rating” and “add to favorites” tool which serves as a bookmarking feature for the service. Once you gave a URL a thumb up or marked it as favorite, your friends will be notified by a sound and can immediately see it live on their collapsible and unobtrusive sidebar. Of course, you can always do that by copying a URL and pasting it on your friend’s IM. The only difference is that with Browzmi, your friends can instantly see the pages that you have bookmarked and they can always go back to the pages that you have visited even if you are offline and easily access that URL when they visit your Browzmi profile which is very common to social bookmarking sites.

Browzmi is also a great place to share your other social networking profiles to your friends. You can easily add your blog URL, Twitter address, Facebook profile page, Friendfeed feeds and a lot more to your Browzmi profile. By doing this, your friends can easily browse your social pages in just one tab. They can rate you pages and make comments about your blogs or social pages.

As I see it, Browzmi is more useful when connected users are online. Otherwise, it’s just like most social bookmarking sites where you can share your favorite pages of the web with your online buddies. I guess the combination of both live and offline features is what makes it different from the others. The real-time sharing is its selling point.

Thanks to Travis Parsons, founder of Browzmi, who was kind enough to guide me through the web app and answer a few questions through their chat service.