Social browsers have gotten a lot of attention with the recent launch of RockMelt, but there are also a number of browser extensions that aim to integrate social media with existing browsers and make information sharing easier. Kikin is one of the most ambitious of these extensions. It goes well beyond Twitter and Facebook integration to bring content from a variety of sites to its browser sidebar.
Customizing Kikin's content is the best way to make it work effectively
Kikin currently works with Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox 3.6, and Google Chrome (all testing for this article was done in Chrome). Once installed, it places a sidebar on the right edge of the browser window with four buttons. The first is for its own settings, and it’s best to take a look at this panel before you start browsing with Kikin. Customizing Kikin’s content delivery is the best way to make it work more effectively.
Kikin works by delivering content from a variety of partner sites when you browse web pages or highlight text on those pages. There are currently 26 partner sites, ranging from titans such as Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, and Bing to more obscure sites. A series of sliders allows you to set how often Kikin will draw content from its partners. By default, the sliders are set to “Standard“, but moving them up to “More” or “Always” for preferred sites is a good idea. There’s also a “Never” option for sites that aren’t relevant to your interests.
Kikin delivers automatic results but works best when you select specific text on a page
Once you have the settings customized, it’s a simple matter of browsing the Web and letting Kikin know what you want to explore in greater depth. Kikin does load some relevant content immediately upon visiting certain pages- it seems to do this especially well with the New York Times- but it’s far better to select text on a page to get specific results.
Selecting the words “Hosni Mubarek” in a New York Times story about political protests in Egypt, for example, brought up results from Twitter, YouTube, Bing’s image search, Wikipedia, Business Insider, and Google. Clicking on any one of the results buttons brings up a window containing the relevant information. The Twitter results are divided into tweets from people you follow and global results, essentially what you would get if you used Twitter’s search function but in a more convenient format.
Kikin's main appeal is the convenience of having multiple sources available in one place
The YouTube button similarly returns the same sort of results you would get searching YouTube itself, but with the convenience of not needing to open another browser tab and navigate away from the current page. You can watch YouTube videos within the sidebar and easily return to the full search results, and share the videos to Facebook or Twitter. Unfortunately, Kikin doesn’t integrate with your YouTube account, so you can’t like or favorite videos from the sidebar.
The main appeal of Kikin is convenience- it’s nice to be able to see a full Wikipedia page on a subject or a YouTube clip without having to leave the current page, and switching back and forth between content panes is easy. Selecting different text brings up new content, and Kikin loads its information quickly. There are some minor irritations- the E! Online content windows occasionally contained annoying talking banner ads- but for the most part, Kikin’s content delivery works as advertised.
Kikin also integrates with e-commerce sites to deliver information about specific products. Amazon, eBay, and iTunes are all represented, and this feature generally works effectively. As with any search engine, results sometimes vary wildly- highlighting the title of Alice Hoffman’s The Red Garden on Barnes & Noble’s site, for instance, returned relevant results from eBay but results concerning other works of the same title from Wikipedia and iTunes. The product search elements will no doubt improve as Kikin adds more partners and gets smarter about filtering results.
Kikin's social media features are limited, but they aren't the main point of the extension
There’s also a Share button for posting links to Facebook and Twitter, and it works in much the same way as RockMelt’s Share function or the F1 extension in Mozilla Firefox. Its only flaw is that it doesn’t show the shortened URL in the tweet window, making it a little difficult to modify its automatically generated text.
You can also view your Facebook and Twitter feeds from the sidebar and post to either site, but Kikin won’t replace anyone’s established Twitter clients. The Twitter features are severely limited- old style re-tweets only, no media uploading options, no real-time streams, and no pop-up notifications.
But, Kikin isn’t really meant to be a Twitter client. Its strength is its content sharing features and its ability to consolidate material from a variety of sites in a single place. It already works extremely well for that purpose, and it will likely continue to get better as more sites are added.
Paul Brown - Paul Ferrell Brown graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1994 with a B.A. in English literature, and completed his M.A. in ...
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