Between RockMelt, Kiobo and Flock, Social Browsing seems to be a flavor of the year. Some already say that if you throw a stone into a murky pond of the Internet, you’re most likely to hit a social browsing upstart. I won’t even mention dead websites of long-abandoned projects (I’m looking at you, Browzmi!).

There’s a good reason for all of that. The social networking cake is just growing larger and larger – and everyone wants a slice. According to Nielsen’s statistics, in 2010 Americans spent about 23% of their online time on social networking sites and services, up from 16% in 2009. Games – the second most popular activity – account for just 10% of users’ online time.

Still, no social browsing tool gathered enough momentum to push into the mainstream. Why? The problem with current social browsing solutions is three-fold. First, all of them (at least all that have a functional product and an established user base) took the browser approach. They go against the grain of user habits, trying to replace a tool everyone knows and likes. Second, they all require a download and installation. You might ask: what’s wrong with that, most of the popular apps do! But there is a huge group of users that simply won’t install anything new. Third – the functionality of social browsers is heavily dependent on frequent updates. Social networking sites change and evolve, you need to change with them or be left behind. And if you steal too much of their thunder, they can simply block you from using their precious data.

Flock user-count took a dive after the initial interest wore off. At one point this social browser had around 9 million users, several awards, and glaring reviews. Then, as the buzz died out, in 2011, Flock was quietly bought out by Zynga, its future remains unknown. And RockMelt? There are around 300,000 active beta users. By comparison, Firefox has 400 million and Chrome – 70 million. Will RockMelt gain popularity, or is it Flock story all over again?

And there’s also one more thing looming on the horizon: Internet Explorer 9. IE9 gives Windows 7 users the ability to pin social networking sites to their taskbar. They will show you notifications and will also have a small context menu, allowing you to perform basic actions (like tweeting or writing on the wall) at any time, in any part of the system. This one small change can make the social browsers that rely on existing services obsolete.

At StormDriver, we took a different approach. We’re not trying to replace a browser. In fact, a browser is a primary tool for accessing our application. We do not require you to install anything, you don’t even have to set up the account in order to start. We have our own, stand-alone social engine providing more data than RockMelt or Flock can gather.

Sure, you might think that StormDriver is late to the game, but being late can also be good.

Have you ever heard of Adrian Jacobs? Well, if you have, then most likely you are one of his relatives, because he’s no celebrity. Why are we even mentioning him? He wrote a series of children novels about a young wizard from the university of magic. The series, called Willy the Wizard, never got any attention. At least not until Harry Potter became an instant hit. Then, a lawsuit came, as some of the storylines from Harry Potter books very closely resembled those by poor Jacobs. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Before Potter came ‘Groosham Grange’, ‘Magician’, ‘Wizard of Earthsea’, ‘Wizard’s Hall’, ‘The Worst Witch’ – all of them strikingly similar to books by Rowling. They never came close to becoming international bestsellers. Harry Potter did.

But let’s talk about social websites, not literature. SixDegrees, Friendster, MiGente, Ryze, LunarStorm, Couchsurfing, Multiply, aSmallWorld, Mixi, Hyves, Xanga, Hi5- they all included functionalities similar to Facebook, and most of them came before Facebook. They never became popular, Facebook did. Some of those sites are still more or less alive. The others failed miserably. Somehow, it didn’t stop Mark Zuckerberg from doing it all over again, with a slightly different angle.

Oh, and when in 1915 Robert Goddard started his work on the first modern rocket , he wasn’t turned off because ‘the Chinese already did that, and it didn’t work’.

Of course, I’m not saying we’re going to be the next Facebook. That’s not what we want to be. We only want to take the idea of social browsing and forge it into something useful. Something we would want to use ourselves.