Earlier this week we had a guest post from the self proclaimed Social Media Jedi, MikeonTV. In that post he showed us how the relativity new microblogging effort, Plurk has taken discussion to a new heights. To compliment his post we are putting another new specimen under the microscope and comparing it to a predecessor that’s had little competition in the few years it has been around. Of course we are talking about toolbar bookmarking success StumbleUpon and it’s new competition SocialBrowse.

Like StumbleUpon, SocialBrowse requires you to install a Firefox plugin (which then activates your account) and allows you to notarize websites, news articles and blog posts at your leisure by means of new buttons in the browser. Sounds alot like SU doesn’t it? Well if you’re a regular ‘Stumbler’ then you know that eventually you’ll need to see what your friends are viewing too keep up pace. That’s a huge part and puts the ’social’ in SocialBrowse.

When you bookmark (or share) a post with SocialBrowse you are making your permanent mark on that URL. As long as any SocialBrowse user has the plugin enabled, your presence will follow that link around the Internet. It will be symbolized by your profile image and hovering over that image will present options such as other users who shared that specific page and comments made by members of the SocialBrowse community.

This expands on StumbleUpons thumbs up action in the toolbar. Instead of just having a blue thumb turn red when we like a page, now every website we visit displays how a community of people felt about the many links on that page without having to load any of them. All the comments are visible (again, by hovering over the profile image) and users are allowed to see a consensus of what’s to come from clicking that link without ever having to.

To compliment all the features available there is a button that triggers a sidebar showing a feed of your SocialBrowse friends activities. Along with that there are in-browser pop-ups, showing friend’s activity, which at times fills the screen and could make the user feel claustrophobic.

If you head to the SocialBrowse home page you can see more in depth user profiles and lists of recent popular content. What we need right now is an embeddable button to include in blogging templates, allowing users to advertise the right to use SocialBrowse and remind current users of its features. Much like the Digg it and Thumb it buttons sprawled across the web today.

In these, the days of instant gratification it is a must for many to know what people are posting, browsing and promoting right away. For that reason SocialBrowse is for the advanced users who just aren’t getting enough from their StumbleUpon accounts. Clearly the SocialBrowse plugin will better as newer releases become available, but the current feature list is enough to convince us at Nethacks that SocialBrowse is practicing innovation in social media as we speak.

So what are you waiting for? Get the plugin now!