Me.dium is a web browser plug-in for Microsoft's Internet Explorer that turns web browsing into a social experience. It gives you a personalized map of the Internet showing where you are, and what web sites your friends are visiting in real time. You can use it to discover new people and places that are relevant just to you. It also allows you to surf with friends in real-time. It's just like hanging out in the real world, but online. 

How it works

Go to Me.dium.com and sign-up for a free account. Download the plug-in and install. You will be up and running in minutes.

After your account is set up you can add friends by either finding them on Me.dium or inviting them to join via an email invitation.

See where your friends are. Once you have built your friends network, and they have Me.dium installed, you can see what web sites they are on, and watch them as they move from site to site. You can go to the same site, see what they are looking at, and start up a chat discussion...all in real time.

Kris Olson from the Emerging Business Team sat down with David Mandell, VP of Marketing at Me.dium, to go deeper into how Me.dium works, their target audience, how people are using Me.dium, and future plans. Check out this video of the interview.

Video: Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program - Interview with David Mandell, Me.dium

Transcript as follows:

KRIS OLSON: So, we're here with David Mandell, the head of marketing for Me.dium at MIX, and I'm talking to David about how Me.dium got started, what it's really trying to do, who the customer is, how the team got together, and what marketing is like at Me.dium, because he has a really interesting bio on his Web page, and I want to hear more about that.

DAVID MANDELL: Sure. So, Me.dium is, from my perspective, a truly exciting challenge for several reasons. First of all, it's really about changing context. And, the thing that really turned me on, on the Me.dium side, is what people understand now about their online experience is a solitary experience. They sit in front of a computer, whether it's a Web site or a program, et cetera, and it's just them and the page, them and the program that they're dealing with.

As in the real world, there's always tons of other people out there doing similar things, looking at the same things, looking at other things that are relevant, and your friends are out there. But in your current context of online experience there's no way to access that information.

So, what Me.dium really does for the first time is give you access to all that information, all that social contextual value that you get in the real world, and bring that into your online experience. So, for the first time you can actually see who else is around you.

KRIS OLSON: So, you have a little window like listing your friends who are online at the same time, or what they're browsing or --

DAVID MANDELL: Sure. So, Me.dium gives it to you in several ways. The first thing you get is a real time map. So, when you're browsing, you glance next to your browser, and what you can see is all the other people out there in real time, and what they're looking at. You can bump into your friends, you can see where the crowds are, you can find  recommendations based on the actual activity of other people. So, you're not sitting there by yourself in front of a Web page; you're now actually in an environment.

KRIS OLSON: It's kind of like Second Life and real life.

DAVID MANDELL: Yeah, but it is the real life --

KRIS OLSON: But it's your life --

DAVID MANDELL: -- and that's the thing

KRIS OLSON: -- exactly.

DAVID MANDELL: It's always been out there, right, but you could never access it. And that's really what Me.dium is about. Me.dium is giving you access to that interaction for the first time.

So, the challenge from a marketing perspective is what you really have to do is change someone's context. They're very comfortable right now, thank you very much, interacting with their computer in a solitary environment. So, in essence it's not cheaper phone calls, you're not giving someone something that they immediately see is missing from their lives, right? So, the challenge is getting them to understand that there is this whole new wealth of information and value out there that they just never had access to before, and how do you interact in that world.

KRIS OLSON: So, who's -- like who's your main target audience at this point? Who's kind of picking it up fastest and getting that?

DAVID MANDELL: So, it's very interesting, because it's actually a fairly broad swath of demographic at this point, and I think what most of the people that are picking it up right now are people that are looking for more, right? So, it's not really targeted -- it's not really been adopted by a specific age group per se, but more about people that spend time online and are used to spending time online.

Social networking plays a big part in it as well. There used to be social online. So, what Me.dium is doing is kind of combining the two, giving them that social interaction that they're used to on the social networks, but they're giving it to them in a real time environment, so when they browse, you can actually surf with your friend now for the first time, you can actually see who's around you.

So, moving forward, the marketing efforts will probably be more on the social networking group, so people that are used to managing their entire socialized online through things like Facebook and other social networks --

KRIS OLSON: Twitter, whatever.

DAVID MANDELL: Twitter, exactly.

KRIS OLSON: Yeah, I saw a mobile one today here. I can't remember the name of it, but it was like to go out -- it was an application where it helped you go out to parties, 100 percent mobile, like who was coming where, when did they arrive, which is the hottest place to go to tonight.

DAVID MANDELL: Sure, and that's a great example that it's all evolving.

KRIS OLSON: Yeah.

DAVID MANDELL: In my mind, what's happened now is, you know, kind of the first stage of the way was information based, right, and now it's getting more social and people-based. And currently that implementation is experienced through a Web site, okay, so -- or a social network, a destination, if you will.

And what's happening now is that's sort of disaggregating, right? So, I can get my Facebook updates on my phone now, I can interact whether or not I'm on the Web site.

But what I still don't have access to, which is really what Me.dium is bringing to the party, is that real time activity layer, so the people layer of the Internet. Being around those people really changes everything. So, for the first time you're not just by yourself online, right, you're truly in an environment with others, you're getting all the social and contextual value that you get from the real world, but in your online experience for the first time.

So, I can see what's going on next to my browser, I have a buddy list just like I would have in a chat client, but now when I interact with my friends on my buddy list, I'm actually having a contextual conversation with them.

So, when I send you a message, for example, I can just say, hey, have you seen this? And when you get that message, you know exactly what I'm talking about, and you can pop over on your map and see -- look at what I'm looking at, right?

KRIS OLSON: That sounds cool, yeah.

DAVID MANDELL: And I can actually see you come over into my view, say, oh, there's Kris, she's sitting right next to me, I wonder what she thinks about this page, right?

So, now it's more like we're walking through the mall together. I can say, what do you think about this shirt? You can say, oh, I like this shirt better; or have you seen this toy for dad, because he'd like that?

But the point is you're now interacting the same way you would in the real world, as opposed to the way you've been limited to online, which is through e-mail interaction or short messages or non-contextual pieces of information that are asynchronous.

KRIS OLSON: So, as a marketing person, I'm curious about like how are you reaching people, what are you doing to let them know about this.

DAVID MANDELL: So, a couple of things. The first thing we do always is make the product as viral as possible. So, when you use Me.dium, we make it as easy as we can for you to invite your friends, and you get them to experience the interaction of Me.dium, because obviously it's much more powerful if you invite someone and explain to them what it is than if they're just listening to me talking about Me.dium.

The other thing we're doing is working with partners, so people like Microsoft, which give us access to a much bigger market, give us access to new tools and new ways of interacting, which is a huge help for us.

But at this point it's a very broad mix of marketing tools that we're using.

DAVID MANDELL: So, David Mandell from Me.dium.

What is Me.dium? What Me.dium is really about is enabling people to find information together. And we do that several different ways, the first of which is really about bringing the whole aspect of social interaction to your browsing experience, so when you're online it's not a solitary experience; it's about seeing who else is out there, seeing what's around you, browsing with your friends, getting information from all the social contextual value that you get in the real world, but in your online experience for the first time. So, that's really what Me.dium is trying to accomplish.

And working with the Emerging Business Team at Microsoft has simply been invaluable from our perspective, because what it's really let us do is get access to information that we never thought we would get before.

So, for example, we were one of the launch partners for IE 8 beta, and they just provided an invaluable stream of information back and forth as we tried to develop on the new platform. We got access to people at Microsoft that helped us both from a marketing and from a development perspective, we got access to intelligence from -- on the development side that helped us get the code written faster, helped us with questions we had.

So, from our perspective, what it really does is speed up development and speed up time to market, and as a startup, time to market is everything. So, it's been a crucial part of Me.dium and our development.

DAVID MANDELL: So, MIX has been a great experience for us at Me.dium for several reasons: First of all, just getting to feel the culture, rubbing shoulders with the people that matter, getting access to people that are using the code, using the product, sharing stories, swapping problems; but on top of that again it's been access to people, so not only seeing how people use your product, but also getting access to the people at Microsoft that you're trying to expose your product to, right, because they have -- they are the gatekeepers, they're the people that own the keys to the market of user adoption. And the more time you can spend with them and the more time you get input on your product and how to make it better integrated with the Microsoft suite, the more value you have down the road.

So, MIX has truly been an invaluable experience for us, and we plan to be here as much as we can.