Do you feel alone in your web browser, separated by time and space from all the other people out there exploring the internet? A startup called Medium thinks it can help make web browsing social by telling you what pages your friends are on at any moment, and where people are congregating on the web at that instant. Think of it as a real-time StumbleUpon, or an implicitly determined Digg.
The company’s origin is in enterprise collaboration software developed by founder Robert Reich, who moved out to Boulder, Colorado with co-founders David Mandell and Peter Newcomb for the opportunity to bring on Kimbal Musk as CEO. Musk, along with his brother Elon, sold their content management company Zip2 in 1999. Since then, they have been involved in the formation of companies like PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors…Kimbal has even opened a restaurant. When we asked him what all his various endeavors had in common, he said “Well, they all face the consumer…except for the rockets.”
Medium, founded July 2005, is in private beta right now, and won’t be available till at least the end of the year. The current implementation is a Firefox extension comprised of a visualization window and a chat window. The visualization is a bit oblique at the moment, but the idea is to portray a map of the entire internet and foreground the site you are currently viewing in your browser as well as related pages (which are basically determined by people who go to the same sites you do).
This is less personal than something like MyBlogLog, because users are kept anonymous to all but their friends unless they choose to be exposed. If you ever want to stop being tracked, it is pretty easy to toggle off (and this is done automatically for any password-protected site). As for the chat, it is along the same lines as MeeboMe, or perhaps Trailfire or Diigo, in that users’ discussion of a page stays with that page for other Medium users to view.
The company, which hasn’t managed to secure the Medium.com domain yet, is funded by Spark Capital and Appian Ventures with an undisclosed sum, though Musk hinted that the number was large because of the requirements of the company’s backend infrastructure.
While I look forward to future implementations of things like breadcrumbs to record where you’ve been, as well as more informative visualizations, the most compelling part of Medium is social. It’s really fun to follow your friends around; for instance, this morning as I’ve been writing, a crowd gathered around a local paper’s story about Medium. I can click over to find out what the hubbub is all about. You can see how this would get a lot more fun with more people on it. I’ll hand out a few more invites to the first commenters so we try to figure out together if this is a novelty item or something compelling enough to keep around long-term.
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11:01 AM PT
[...] Me.dium, a “social browser” company that was covered previously by GigaOm, is also hooking into the Yahoo! results. Their social search engine bills itself as “search what the crowds are surfing,” hooking up information from where its users are navigating to suggest results. The result is to bubble recent and newsmaking sites to the top of the list - for example, right now a search for “telecommute” highlights a story about Lively and its impact on telecommuters, as well as a recent job posting. [...]
24 comments so far
1:43 PM PT
yeah, this was already done a while ago, and much better, (link) , including chat etc…wouldn’t take much to build a layer on swarm for socializing with contacts…
1:53 PM PT
Hi Liz - sounds interesting, I’d like to help figure out if there’s something there.
1:53 PM PT
Hey Liz,
Will be interesting to see if this sticks. We wrote something similar about a year ago called Jybe. If you ever want some thoughts on that space, would love to chat.
Best,
brian
2:22 PM PT
Shoot me an email I would love to test drive.
foodchain at gmail
3:10 PM PT
Liz, I’d like to try it!
3:24 PM PT
Would love to give this a try.
3:47 PM PT
I’m interested to try it out too … my first reaction is that it’s much creepier than MyBlogLog, but I suppose if you can turn off the tracking it’s not so bad. I’d like to know more.
4:11 PM PT
Would also love to try this out. I’m still hoping for a better graphical representation of the web that looks as though it was put together by a human.
4:44 PM PT
Sounds like an interesting tool. I wounder if StumbleUpon might have similar plans? I too am interested in testing the new service — you can reach me via my web site (which is linked above).
4:49 PM PT
Sorry for the dupe, but I hate typos — “wonder”.
4:52 PM PT
This sounds a little bit creepy, and I’m wondering how well it helps you find new relevant sites versus just sucking away your time. Anyway, if there are any invites left please let me know. Thanks
10:06 PM PT
If there are any invites left, would love to check it out!
2:14 AM PT
Scot i tried to register and get an invite but no luck . its always like that . post of gigaom and TC get us all excited but that almost always they are in private beta
I hate to wait . can someone tell me how they choose to get tester for Private beta ?
4:51 AM PT
I’d like to check this out.
(link)
6:15 AM PT
hi..i also try everytime but with no luck…anyway if any invites are left plz pass it on…
Liz this is good way to get user comments for your article..
7:38 AM PT
Seems like an exciting idea. The creators obviously have a vision but once users start playing with it - they will define it. It will be interesting to see this idea take shape.
I would like to play with it !
10:36 AM PT
In real life, when you go to a cafe or a party, you can see immediately how many people are there. It’d be nice to not have to dig (no pun intended) for that info on the internet.
If there are more invites, I’d appreciate one. Thanks for the offer, Liz.
10:56 AM PT
Liz, this sounds like the kind of thing we need… be happy to test it out with ya.
Matt
4:57 PM PT
@ Liz — thanks for the mention. Are there features here that you’d like to see added to MyBlogLog.
@ Bree — is the creepy part publishing your clickstream, even to your friends?
9:19 PM PT
Looks like an interesting interface, I’d definitely like to give it a spin, thanks.
8:32 AM PT
I’ve been using Me.dium for quite some time now. I find it to be both user-friendly and an excellent add-on to my Internet browser.
9:54 AM PT
haven’t found any useres except employees and bots. anyone see anything different??
doryz at hotmail dot com
2:25 PM PT
I thinks this sounds like a fantastic idea. As a consumate computer user, I am never OFF the internet and does get lonely out here. I would lover to be able to see my friends and meet new people while working and browsing. Feel free to get in touch with me any time you want.
Gabriela
12:16 PM PT
i like social browsing very much. i installed me.dium and couple of other services like me.dium. there is a better service than me.dium called bumpin (http://www.bumpin.com) i like it very much u should give it a try…
its user interface is better than me.dium and it offers much more cool stuff
paul
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