Me.dium - a social web browsing experience

Me.dium is a web browser plug-in for Microsoft's Internet Explorer that turns web browsing into a social experience. It gives you a personalized map of the Internet showing where you are, and what web sites your friends are visiting in real time. You can use it to discover new people and places that are relevant just to you. It also allows you to surf with friends in real-time. It's just like hanging out in the real world, but online. 

How it works

Go to Me.dium.com and sign-up for a free account. Download the plug-in and install. You will be up and running in minutes.

After your account is set up you can add friends by either finding them on Me.dium or inviting them to join via an email invitation.

See where your friends are. Once you have built your friends network, and they have Me.dium installed, you can see what web sites they are on, and watch them as they move from site to site. You can go to the same site, see what they are looking at, and start up a chat discussion...all in real time.

It is fascinating to watch the Me.dium cloud change as your friends move from site to site. We already follow our friends with Instant Messaging, RSS feeds, email, Twitter, and other ways. But to see them move in real time in your browser is amazing.

Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program

Me.dium is part of Microsoft's Startup Accelerator Program. Listen to what David Mandell, VP at Me.dium has to say about the program;

Getting direct connections to developers within Microsoft speeded our own internal development time significantly, I would estimate about a 50% velocity increase. In addition, gaining exposure to some of the Microsoft MVP’s gave us critical product feedback that we simply didn’t have the manpower to gain on our own. Getting on the Windows Marketplace site quickly took our customer mix from almost completely Firefox users, to a ratio of 75% IE to 25% Firefox, all through new customer acquisition. 

The Emerging Business Team and The Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program have truly turned into an invaluable resource for Me.dium.  We would never have imagined that a company as large as Microsoft would have the desire to focus on a small startup such as Me.dium, but we were completely blown away by the attention and access to people that we were given and owe much or our current success to that relationship.

Me.dium has an All-Star management team. Founded by Robert Reich, Peter Newcomb, and David Mandell. Kimbal Musk, a serial entrepreneur is the CEO.

The investors are top shelf too. My good friend Brad Feld was an early investor. Another good friend, Elliot Katzman of Commonwealth Capital was a major investor in the second round. Spark Capital and Appian Ventures are also investors.

Check out Me.dium and let me know what you think.

Comments

[Ivan]

It sounds like an interesting idea, Don, I like the idea of chatting and sharing with friends when you are browsing funny articles or video, but what is its business model? Targeted advertising? or something else?

Also, would you want your friends to know exactly which webpage you are surfing at the moment? =)

Cheers,
Ivan

[Cassio]

Hi Don, It's just a copy of www.othersonline.com, or am I wrong? I also can't see any business model different from advertising, but perhaps it would be a strategy to attain users to MS Explorer...

Best,
Cassio

[Tamir]

Hi Don,

I worked in the mid ninghties on a company called Ubique that was sold to AOL and developed Virtual Places. That SW was just like Me.dium...
AOL then sold it to IBM. You can check it out at: Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Places

History repeats itselfs...

Tamir