Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen is busy making dozens of small bets on startups in his $300 million venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. RockMelt may emerge as one of his most intriguing investments, because of both his history as a pioneer in Web browsing and his current ties to social networking behemoth Facebook.
The New York Times reported on Friday that the Andreessen-backed startup will somehow incorporate Facebook user names in its browser, so that users could presumably interact with their friends on the social network while they’re surfing around the Web. The newspaper reports that Facebook is not explicitly connected to the project – but that wouldn’t prevent RockMelt from tapping into its API, a code that makes Facebook data available to other Web sites and services.
