Ask HN: Facebook browser?

3 points by austinB 15 years ago | 4 comments

Many online giants have created browsers after establishing a significant presence or before in some cases (ie. Netscape, Aol, MSFT, Google, etc.). Has anyone heard of, or do you all see potential for Facebook to follow this trend and create a social network integrated browser? I have to believe many individuals, especially university students and less techy facebook addicts, would use a browser by FB. Undoubtedly productivity would go down, but I doubt that's what Mark Z is concerned about. I am interested to hear your thoughts.

badkins 15 years ago |

If FB really wanted to do something like this, I would think they would have a better chance by writing extensions to the existing browsers, rather than writing a whole new browser.

People do not switch browsers on a whim. But people install new extensions all the time.

hoag 15 years ago |

Valid point: seems that a "social browser" of sorts, from within FB's walled garden, would accomplish with far greater effect -- and success -- the idea behind Flock and RockMelt.

anujkk 15 years ago |

Flock (http://www.flock.com) is one such social web browser.

philthy 15 years ago |

Could see this being chalked up in the "bloatware" category on new Windows machines.