social media

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.

Generation Me logs on to redefine what news and entertainment means to them.


As you are probably aware, user-generated content is topping the popularity charts on the net. Millions log on to post their own web pages, blogs, videos, albums, surveys and more. They build their own community of friends, family and fans who can’t seem to get enough of it. Behind this radical shift that is challenging the traditional concept of ‘mass media’, there are companies that are raking it in big time.

Welcome to the social networking revolution! Powered by the likes of MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, YouTube and Digg, millions now log on to share the ins and outs of their life, and document their personal experiences for a potential audience of over a billion Internet users, spread across 233 countries around the world.

Back when the dot com euphoria was sweeping the world, many saw the Internet as the next mass medium that would dethrone TV.

Multi-million dollar domain sales were the order of the day, with Business.com commanding as much as $7.5 million, with no viable business model in sight. Similarly, Sex.com fetched a cool $12 million - another business whose value was pegged solely on being prime Internet real estate.

A look at today's most popular web sites indicates that none of these over-hyped domains lived up to their name. The value of a web business is based on the uniqueness of its offerings and the profitability of its business model. Yesterday's hot domain deals have gone down in history as symbols of the mindless greed and hype behind the dot com 'bubble valuations'.

Over a decade down the line, the most successful web sites have proved that it's not big money, but big ideas, that drive the Internet. What else could explain the explosive popularity of humble beginners such as MySpace.com, Yahoo.com, Google.com or the bandwidth-powered YouTube.com, while most richly-funded startups bit the dust?

As most dot com millionaires would agree, big money is actually a deterrent when it comes to building a successful website. Big money talks, but small websites listen. The most popular and addictive websites are listeners and enablers. They readily take the backseat, giving users easy and powerful ways to express themselves and connect with like-minded people. And therein lies the key to their success.

In an age when the world has been flattened and shrunk to fit a computer screen, human nature hasn't changed. As technology pushes the boundaries of time and space, we retreat within to seek comfort in familiarity.

No matter how far we go, our main interest is in seeking ourselves. We passionately seek to reinforce our identity with the people, places and events we can relate with.

For me personally, I enjoy visiting the following sites:

1. Digg - This is so I can find some interesting topics/articles that have recently been dugg. It allows me to get on top of new news that's just happened. This is what I like about it. However, I don't particularly like the community, it seems so impersonal as so many new items are being dugged at such a fast rate and the comments you provide are quickly forgotten as the thread gets longer and time passes.

2. Entrecard - If I want to network and join a community forum, then Entrecard is one of the best. The majority of members are very helpful and you get to know who the people are through the forums and also by being able to visit their blogs or websites very easily.

3. Blippr - I like this site and it is slowly growing, as I love movies. I can be the first to review the movies, music and books I like and it becomes a permanent record in their database. So if someone searches for a movie title (and you have blipped it), they can see your brief review about that movie. It also has a really nice GUI feel about the site.

What web site/s do you relate to and frequently visit?