CEO Eric Vishria and CTO Tim Howes of RockMelt invited me over on Friday to see a new browser. Who is behind this? Marc Andreessen. The guy who started Netscape. He, and a bunch of other interesting people are investors in this company.

In this video you’ll see what makes this browser different. Or, you can see the other people who’ve seen it and are writing about it on Techmeme. You can sign up for access to the beta at RockMelt.com.

After all that, I’m left with the question: does this startup have the right philosophy?

Why am I wondering that?

1. I’m a power user. I have iPads. iPhones. Android phones. Windows Phone 7 phones. Plus Windows 7 and Macintosh-based desktop and laptop computers. Oh, and an Xbox and a Playstation and a Roku box, among other widgets and gadgets. My browsing experience spans nearly all of these, so someone who only has an answer for Windows and Macintosh is not likely to make its way into my life.
2. It requires a download. I’ve interviewed tons of “normal” users lately as I fly around the world. Most people are download adverse. Even iPhone and iPad users are not trying a whole lot of new things. Of the geeky early-adopter audiences I’ve spoken to, only about 5% have loaded more than 100 apps on those platforms. Users on old-style systems are far less likely to try new things.
3. It requires a login. Folks are not used to logging into their browser. That’s a major change to ask people to do to get new features.
4. It changes search behavior. I use Google Chrome BECAUSE it only has one box: the one where you enter your searches as well as your URLs. I think that’s elegant and nice. RockMelt asks you to use two separate boxes again, which clutters UI, but worse yet, asks you to change your expectations of how search should work (yes, it’s better, but change is hard for normal users — they probably will wonder why search isn’t just pulling up full Google).
5. The Twitter client isn’t full featured. It doesn’t support real time, for instance, like Seesmic and Tweetdeck do. So, advanced users like me won’t find it good enough.

That is a LOT of change to ask people to do and it’s a lot to ask early adopters to overlook. Here’s why that matters:

Late adopters usually change their behavior only after getting hounded by early adopters. I’ve seen this over and over. Many marketers think they can work around the early adopters and usually that turns out to be a bad strategy. Can you think of an example of when a new product ignored the early, or advanced, adopters/users, and got major adoption at the mass market without them? I can’t and I’ve been studying this for a long time.

Already I’m watching reactions on Twitter and most of the advanced user types are wondering whether this is like Flock (another social browser most of them have ignored) and some, like Rafat Ali, say that this is the worst of Silicon Valley bubbleisms.

Why is there such a negative reaction?

Change is hard, but there’s something else: advanced users have a framework of WHERE they’ll accept change. I call it “battlefronts.” Places where the industry is actively fighting it out. Right now I expect a LOT of change on mobile apps, for instance, but not much change on my desktop or laptop computers or operating systems. Browser wars? So 1996. But 2010? We’re in a mobile phone war, for gosh’ sake. Too much change in wrong place and it gets a blowback.

Tonight I’ll have several videos, for instance, from companies who are doing apps for Windows Phone 7. Those will be very well received, I expect, compared to RockMelt.

So, why do I care about RockMelt? Because social continues to radically change everything about my life. Look at Foodspotting, Foursquare, Tungle.me, and/or Plancast. Those are radical changes to how I live my life. I want a browser that integrates those into my Facebook and Twitter experience. So far that hasn’t arrived. Will RockMelt bring it to us in the future? Possibly, but today they haven’t and have aimed at slower adopters.

I think that’s a strategic mistake. How about you? In the interview RockMelt covers why they made the bets they did at 19m 40 seconds into the video. “There are 2.1 billion people who use browsers…that’s a lot of people.” Listen to their answer.

Is it the right philosophy for a startup to have?

http://www.cinchcast.com/cinchplayerext.swf

While at Facebook a group of us got called aside for a private interview with Mark Zuckerberg. In the interview was MG Siegler and Jason Kincaid of Techcrunch and David Gelles of the Financial Times. From Facebook was Erick Tseng, head of mobile.

You can listen to this interview on my Cinchcast, thanks to the other journalists for letting me record that.

We covered a wide variety of topics and Zuckerberg answered them in a candid and open way that you rarely see him do.

More later tonight as I digest what he said, just wanted to get this up since it’s a very interesting look into the mind of the guy who is disrupting industries and major tech companies.

Today Mark Zuckerberg announced a bunch of stuff. Go read Techmeme to hear about Single Signon, and its new deal platforms. Those are interesting because they increase the lockin that Facebook will have over its users. Why? Well now you’ll always keep your phone signed into Facebook and you’ll be able to instantly sign into new services that use Facebook’s single signin. That alone is pretty big, but I’m a user and focused on location-based services.

But don’t miss the huge shift going on.

In the past, to find a business, we’d go to Google and type something like “Palo Alto Sushi.”

We’re heading toward a world where you’ll use location-based services to do the same thing. That is a HUGE disruptive threat to Google.

Here’s why.

In Google’s world they controlled everything and were able to decide which ads get displayed next to searches for businesses.

The world has now shifted to where people like my wife stay signed into Facebook 18 hours a day. Now she can see which businesses her friends are using.

Soon, we’ll have the ability to even get deals. For instance, the North Face is giving us $1 to check in at a National Park or at one of its stores.

Look at how folks find their way into my brother’s bar in Virginia, too. What will get people into a bar? A Google style ad, or an ad that says “five of your friends are at the bar right now?” Hint: Google-style ads don’t work for lots of businesses and social and location-based ads are far more effective.

Today Facebook laid down an entire platform for doing this, which will enable new mobile apps to have these features built in. Google is lost in such a world.

That should scare the hell out of them. What’s Google’s answer?