What’s Going on With Netscape?
TechCrunch is reporting that AOL is considering killing off the current incarnation of Netscape, “the ‘Digg Clone’ social news site that they launched a little over a year ago at Netscape.com, and redirecting traffic to the Netscape portal instead.”
If true this is one of the most surprising moves I’ve seen this year. Reports about the success of Netscape’s shift to people-powered social news has been varied, but the bottom line is that while Digg dominates the space that it helped to invent, there is very little major competition in what should be a wide open marketplace.
I continue to believe that social news is the future of news. My prediction is that many major online news platforms in the future will evolve to what I call hybrid social news: a combination of submitted and voted upon stories, original news content, and news stories selected by editorial staff from around the web.
The right combination of professional and community-driven content will be a winner when executed properly. Netscape in my view is a great experiment in that direction, combining its news “anchors” with user submitted stories and voting. Of course, it’s far from perfect, but the very fact that it stands with only Reddit as significant competition to the tech-driven Digg should give AOL execs pause before they pull the plug.
Former Netscape GM Jason Calacanis, who has been Netscape’s biggest cheerleader even after his departure, writes “No idea what is going on over at Netscape…”
Search Engine Land alerted me to the fact that Tom Drapeau, current head of the “Netscape.com social news site,” angrily commented on the TechCrunch story that the rumors are false, and that the story is nothing more than hysteria caused by a newly added option on Netscape to access the “old” portal / non-social news experience.
However, a number of bloggers, including Susan Mernit, translate AOL’s early official response to the story as corporate-speak for buh-bye to Netscape as social news platform.
That would really be too bad.
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August 10th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
My only complaint with Netscape is that there is too much confusion about logging in. It may be user error, but half the time I can’t log in. The whole universal i.d. is a good idea, but to have to remember an entire url is silly.
August 11th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
I’ve had trouble logging into netscape in the past, but the last several months or so have been pretty smooth.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:08 am
Eric,
In the world of computers, I’m just an old geezer who prefers to cover his miserable typing with spell-checks, and his lousy writing with delete keys and the ability to move text from one place to another with a few keystrokes.
In other words, I’m a child of the era of the manual typewriter, grateful for the ease of the word processor, and for the accuracy of spreadsheet programs.
But I have to remind you that the computer culture depends on two things that the average computer owner has little control over - a stable supply of electric current, and a working phone line.
If you lack one or the other, the whole computer culture falls apart and you are left with tinkering kids building telegraphs and re-learning Morse Code. Everything you are writing about disintegrates into irrelevancy. In fact, without the elecrtric juice to keep virtual reality going, virtual reality disappears.
Just some thoughts from a potential war-zone where both electricity and phone lines can disappear,
Best,
Reuven
August 15th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Very much agreed, Ruvy! I live in greater Los Angeles, which should be one of the easier places to get reliable Internet connectivity on the planet, yet I’ve been struggling with this very issue for more than a year now.
Hope you stay connected, and definitely hope that you stay safe!