Social Browse - Make Web Surfing a Group Activity

One of my favorite things about Internet Marketing is that I get invited to a lot of really cool new sites to try out and test. The latest in my adventures is Social Browse. It’s a kind of a mashup of stumbleupon and digg.

When you sign up you’re prompted to install a firefox addon, which is actually very lite and not intrusive. The program adds two new buttons to your firefox toolbar, one which opens up the Social Browse panel (gives you access to your account information and feed), and the other to share sites.

Once you’ve installed the addon you can decide to register an account or not, but without an account you lose out on a lot of the features. When you create an account you get the option of following other users, and this is where the power of Social Browse is.

When someone you’re following shares a site you get a popup showing the site. You can also check your feed in your Social Browse panel to see what’s been shared.

So you’re thinking “Ok I can see how it’s like stumbleupon because of the toolbar and surfing yeah ok, but how is it like digg?”

Well that’s the best part, when you share a site, you give it a vote. When a follower of yours shares that site again, you gain a “karma point” and the site gains another vote. Votes are tallied on a page and the shares are ranked.

The ease of voting on a site, and sharing of articles is why I’m a big fan of Social Browse. Another big perk is that I can choose which shares I want to visit. I only look at what interests me, and I see this all while doing what I’m usually doing, without the need of going to a specific site.

Why It’s Useful to an Internet Marketer

I wrote before that Twitter and Plurk are great tools for Personality Branding; Social Browse is amazing for branding your image or logo. Why so? It’s because Social Browse allows users to see an image of users that have already shared the link. The more you share, the more often your image or logo is seen by other Social Browse users.

Another great advantage to using Social Browse is that because of its toolbar and popup feature, if your blog article is shared, it goes directly to your readers. Readers don’t have to search in Google, visit their RSS reader, or go to a social media site, before coming to your article.

All in all, if Social Browse builds a greater user base it can have a large impact on social media.

Right now, though, it’s in Private Beta and new features are being added based on user feedback. Want to be a part of the beta? Leave a comment, I have a few invites left.

Already have an account? Be sure to follow me

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