What started out as an attempt to rethink the web browser ended up as a new app called Kite, a social network for sharing internet articles with your followers, similar to the way Instagram does with photos. This full-featured web browsers, which substitutes a social graph for the URL bar (see photo below), loads a stream of updates from people you follow who each link stories or webpages they think is worth sharing.
Instead of having algorithms that tell us what to read which no one finds interesting, users want to know what interesting people like Obama are reading every day which isn’t possible right now. With this app, users can like the articles, save them to their reading lists for later, comment and share them, and most importantly get recommendations on what to read from those you actually care about.
The creator, Trond Werner Hansen, thought that a mobile browser needs to have a greater purpose than serving as a generic window into the web. So he created this app which is a browser that you navigate by way of social recommendations instead of through search results and URLs.
What makes Kite different than Chrome and Safari is that it is designed exclusively for reading and sharing, so no matter where you are you can save the page you are reading for later, post it to your stream, or favorite its parent site so you can more easily read its content. It also cooperates with other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn so you can share what you are reading there but it can also be self contained if you want.

Why It’s Hot
Closed publishing platforms like Flipboard, Apple News, or Facebook instant articles have been around for a while but don’t always keep readers and users hooked on them as something that has a social component to it. Maybe when a browser is disguised as a social network that allows you to see and share what friends, political figures, or celebrities are reading it will change the way we read our daily intake of articles and news. As the article says, social networks are only as good as the strength of the community of people already trying it– so they need to build it up to what it could be. <Maybe an app like this could be of use for our hot sauce group to share our articles with each other.
Read more about Kite here.