ARE you excited over The Coop, the social networking project that Mozilla Labs has announced for my favorite browser, Firefox?
The idea of incorporating social networking features directly into your browser actually appeals to me, and it could help Firefox wean more users from Internet Explorer.
Here’s an excerpt from the Mozilla Labs blog entry.
Just a few years ago, one of the most popular uses of the internet was to send jokes, cute pictures, and news stories to friends and family (social networks) via email. Fast forward to today, and you’ll find that not a lot has changed except the medium. Now one of the most common uses of instant messenger services and social networking sites is to send people links to jokes, cute pictures and interesting news stories.
This behavior isn’t at all surprising - it’s friends sharing experiences, the very backbone of social interactions and friendships. It’s also unsurprising that most “Web 2.0″ services have a feature that makes it easy for you to build a social network so that you can share things more easily, or subscribe to a friend’s activity as a way of keeping in touch.
What is surprising, however, is how little of this type of functionality has made it into today’s web browsers. The result is that when people think of tools for social interaction, email and instant messenger are at the top of their list, not web browsers.
How about you, do you think The Coop will fly?
April 8th, 2007 at 12:09 am
I still have a doubt over this one. Unless, they’ll find a way to make people choose this service compared to the popular messengers and social networks.