Me.dium – Social Web Browsing

[If you want invites for Me.dium read on]

Me.dium (medium) is a Social Networking startup which wants to make web browsing social. It connects you with users based on their websurfing habbits. Me.dium is a small add-on available for Firefox which operates through a sidebar. This sidebar connects you with people visiting similar websites via a visualization system somewhat similar to Digg Swarm. You can also see what websites your friends are visiting. Me.dium also has a simple instant messaging system built into it which allows you to shoutout to other Me.dium users or chat with your friends.

Privacy : With services like these privacy is a concern. Fortunately, Me.dium handles it rather well. It collects url of websites visited by you, however https:// websites are automatically ignored. You can turn off Me.dium with the click of a button when you wish to keep your surfing session private. While surfing and posting messages in the shoutbox, you can chose keep your username hidden or show it only to friends. If you are still unhappy you can email Me.dium and ask them to delete all data collected from you.

My Opinion : On paper Me.dium appears to be a very good idea. However, after using it for three days, I am disappointed with the execution. It is fun watching what my friends are doing and interacting with them. But, it is really the only thing that Me.dium has got right. Me.dium is supposed to show me relavent websites being visited by other users. I expected it to be a real-time version of StumbleUpon. However, I found that Me.dium kept displaying identical set of users irrespective of the website I was visiting. Apparently Me.dium believes that adultfriendfinder.com is relevant to ndtv.com! One explanation for this could be that at this point Me.dium just doesn�t have enough users to throw up relevant websites. And judging from the lack of activity in the Shoutbox, I believe this is very likely. Again, this doesn’t auger well for Me.dium. Considering that it has been accepting users for more than six months it should have hundreds of active users by now. If it doesn’t, that indicates that most users have moved on because the service wasn�t compelling enough.

Another aspect that I am concerned about is it’s business model. Me.dium has succeeded in creating a decent amount of buzz and has received substantial funding. But the question I have to ask is how do they plan on becoming profitable?

Me.dium definitely has the potential. It is innovative and stands out among hordes of other similar social networking websites. However at the moment it’s execution leaves much to be desired.

Try it Yourself : Me.dium is still an invite-only system (i.e. you need an invite to register). If you want to try it yourself, just leave a comment here mentioning you want an invite. Make sure that you enter a valid email address (there is no need to post it in the comment body).