Browzmi - The Social Way to Explore The Web

Web 2.0 has enabled us to connect with people around the world easier than ever. Social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, sites like Digg, Stumbleupon and Twitter have unraveled a new world and helped foster huge communities of internet users who work together when they are online.

Browzmi is a web app which takes things a step further and intends to make the basic process of casual surfing on the internet an interactive and engaging one, where you can have your friends see what you are surfing and vice versa. It’s simply exploring the web with your friends and getting involved in a healthy discussion about your likes and dislikes about a particular website.

I know what you might be thinking. You probably think that it’s some kind of toolbar which you’ll need to install. Well, here is the biggest advantage of Browzmi. It’s a web app and does not require any installation whatsoever. You just need to create an account at their website and while you are logged in, you can surf with friends. When you feel like browsing anonymously then you can just sign out of Browzmi and continue surfing the internet. It allows you to easily go private when you want.

When you sign into your Browzmi account, you’ll find that the page has two address bars (one of them being a Google search bar ) at the top and just below them, there are 3 horizontal panes. The middle pane is the widest and it has two sidebars on each side, namely ‘My Stuff’ and ‘Explore More’.

When you type a website URL in the Browzmi address bar at the top, it opens the website in the middle pane. Therefore it’s like a social browser within your browser. Keep in mind that it doesn’t support secured (https) sites and other sites which it might consider inappropriate, for the obvious reasons. Currently, since this a new app, you may find some sites not opening properly in it. They recommend installing the Browzmi Homebase Firefox extension for better surfing - however I was able to surf pretty well even without that extension.

The sidebars are the places where the real action takes place. The left sidebar (’My Stuff’) is the place where you can see who among your friends are online and what they are surfing. It also allows you to chat with them in real time while you browse the website. Furthermore, it lets you access your favorites (the sites which you voted up in Browzmi) and your friends’ recent activity.

The right sidebar known as ‘Explore More’ lets you see which other users are online and allows you to start a chat with them directly. Furthermore, it has an interesting feature. It has two buttons - ‘Related Photos’ and ‘Related Videos’. By clicking them you can access stuff related to the website which you are browsing. I checked it by browsing to my blog- Jeet Blog and then clicking the ‘Related Photos’ button on the right and I should say it did a good job by pulling up the photos from Flickr which were tagged as Jeet Blog (I only have 2 such photos by the way…I am hoping to upload more stuff soon).

The screenshot below offers a nice explanation of the various features in your Browzmi account.

Overall, it was a nice experience browsing in Browzmi and I didn’t face any problems while accessing its various features or while surfing the web in its in-built browser. Try it out and let us know what do you think about it.

(By) Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips and productivity hacks at Jeet Blog