Mozilla plans to put the social in the browser

Over at the Mozilla Labs Blog, which I spotted via Startup Meme, there’s some details on what’s being called “The Coop,” which is a beta project that basically plans to add some social networking-type services to Firefox.

This is a really cool idea.

I remember a while back when I was on my “hey! new browsers!” kick and I downloaded virtually everything capable of displaying a web page I ran into Flock, downloaded the beta, and played around with it a bit. I’m sure that it’s changed for the better over the past year, but I’m willing to bet that this new Firefox project makes them quite nervous.

Flock just didn’t implement things right, when I used it. They had the right idea, but for some reason it was just a weird move to make from using a “standard” browser to using their system. Mostly it was the bookmarks that threw me, if I remember.

But Firefox has a lot to gain from hybridizing the browser with an IM service/social network. I’m not sure that their implementation is going to be right for me, judging by the info that they’ve put up on the blog already, but I’m interested nonetheless.

They talk about using the Facebook shares system to share links via the browser in an IM-like fashion, with a sidebar full of profile pics of your friends. The problem with this is that AIM is better, and everybody is already on AIM. That’s why I rarely use Skype—nobody is on the network (this is a different gripe, bleh).

I think that using the browser as a centralized “profile” from a social networking standpoint is an awesome idea. I’m tired of making profiles on fifty different web services, no matter how much I like them (last.fm is awesome, but do I really need a profile there as well as facebook, myspace, my own site, etc…)

I’ll keep an eye on this project.