Me.dium Adds IE 7 and A Twist

Today Me.dium is announcing full compatibility with IE-7. Me.dium has been available for Firefox and Flock since February and the Explorer version has been much anticipated. In addition, the developers have created a widget that applies Me.dium's “real time” window to blogs and other pages.

The new widget may well steal the news, as this tool extends Me.dium's “Web discovery” aspect to other sites. Bloggers and site owners can now observe traffic patterns, visitors and friends in and around their pages. Non-Medium users will also be able to interact via the widget to explore Web sites that Me.dium users are visiting.

Me.dium made big news this year when they released their social browsing experience that enables people to surf and discover the Web with friends. The IE-7 release is a big step according to CEO Kimbal, as Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser worldwide. As with many startups one of the biggest complaints about Me.dium was their lack of support for multiple browsers and in this case IE.

Me.dium Widget Magic

This news of IE-7 compatibility will be music to the ears of many Me.dium enthusiasts, but the new “local” widget has interesting and innovative possibilities. Me.dium users can obviously extend their networks much farther and non-users can also see activity on diverse sites around the Web without signing up. Of course this is an obvious but no less brilliant branding strategy by the developer, but at the end of the day Me.dium is a fun useful tool. Bloggers and site owners will be able to observe traffic coming in and leaving their sites in real time, and visitors will doubtless be curious about Me.dium.

In my view Me.dium has been very effective in creating win-win situations with their development all along, but this seemingly simple tool holds much more capability than is readily apparent. I talked with Robert Reich Me.dium's Co-Founder and VP of Product Development back in February about the possibility of “transplanting” their technology onto other sites. Robert told me then that they had these plans on the drawing board.

One application I had in mind was an internal search/location “radar” for Tangler in particular. I hope Marty Wells will forgive me, but the one aspect of Tangler that drove me nuts was the relative inability to precisely locate a friend or member at any given time. This problem is not just symptomatic or Tangler either, as many developments lack a substantial means of navigation for connectivity between users. Tangler is a great development in its own right, but I simply wanted to be able to “get hold” of my friends without relying on notifications or extended waiting for communication.

Connecting

How many times have I wished I could find a friend at Digg, Tangler, Facebook or any number of other sites? We all have so many IM messages and notifications now it is impossible to keep up. With this cool tool it will be possible to see a friend's activity and to discover “at least” their location or online status. More importantly, internal navigation and sharing will be improved for a great many sites.

Imagine checking out a story on Digg or Netscape and not having to go all the way around the barn in order to share experiences. This is a very viral little tool that can help people connect and share on many levels. The combination of IE-7 compatibility and this widget will enable many more users to get a more clear picture of what is happening in their circle of friends and within any Web site utilizing the widget. I am not sure about the Me.dium chat module in this release, but that aspect would add greatly to sites where no chat module exists.

Conclusion

These upgrades appear simple and to some extent expected releases by Me.dium. We lose track of the fact that the people at these companies work very hard to integrate all these innovations. Me.dium has been an interesting development from the start, stimulating discourse on Web privacy, tracking analytics, monetization models and so on. The bottom line for this release is that Me.dium continues to maintain a progressive, insightful and incremental excellence in adding value for users. Small details and fulfilling promises is symbolic of both the people and future of startups. Me.dium has yet to let us down in this regard – we look forward to seeing this widget on our favorite sites. IE-7 downloads are available at the Me.dium Web site and the widget can be obtained via Me.dium user's “manage my widgets” aspect. You can also preview the widget by visiting this link and download.com will be presenting Me.dium at 9 AM PST for those of you who would like to access this release there.