AOL Relaunch Netscape as Social Bookmarking Site

It looks like AOL’s relaunch of Netscape is underway. At this point it’s happening as a beta at http://www.beta.netscape.com/.

First impressions

They are obviously looking to compete pretty directly with Digg but on a wider range of topics (or channels). Their ‘votes’ set up is very digg-ish.
One thing I don’t like is that the main links on each story point to a Netscape page and not directly to the site that the story is from. They do have a ‘via’ link that links back to the source but it’s much smaller than the main story headline. It seems like they are trying to keep people on the site rather than sharing the link love like other social bookmarking sites.
Lots of Advertising – I bet there will be some criticism of this
They must be doing some serious traffic already as it’s all running quite slow for me and I’ve not had any success in registering yet.

Amusingly the top story there at the moment is one titled ‘AOL Copies Digg’ (it had to happen). Netscape is part user generated (and voted) and part edited content. It’ll be interesting to watch it develop and to see whether social bookmarking fans will embrace it or whether they’ll stick to the original versions of this type of site.

You can read more about the new Netscape at:

Comments

Alexandre Argrow says:

6/15/2006 at 6:10 pm

Good info. Thanks.
Maurice says:

6/15/2006 at 6:57 pm

Hmm

Can’t even get the sign up form to work in IE very professional NOT!

Looks interesting a non techie digg alike is somthing that is missing
from the

Rgds M
JAMINUSA says:

6/15/2006 at 11:01 pm

Well, honestly I am at least glad they admitted upfront that is part editor controlled, Digg did not do this. Having said that I found it quite amusing that when I was in Internet Explorer the pages did not look correct, but then I went to firefox and everthing looked fine. I registered and put my first story on the site. My story is under autos, titled Reviewed: Lexus IS350. We will see how it goes.

My first impressions are that there are a lot of ads, and I say so what? You can look at any magazine on the newstand, and if you actually take the 100 page magazine and break it down to the articles, you are probably left with about 5 pages of real words.

Secondly, I like everything Jason Calacanis has his hands on, they all seem to work out well, and become very popular very quickly. I just read a comment on another blog that techie people will stay with digg. Well so what, techie people are less likely to click on ads anyway.

My conclusion, it won’t kill digg, but it will give them some really healthy competition.
Robb D says:

6/15/2006 at 11:27 pm

After creating my account, I am not able to log in. It is in beta though so I won’t complain too much.

AOL may want ot exercise a bit of editorial control over the avatars that members can upload. Let’s just say that some of them are not so socially acceptable.
Bryan Fleming says:

6/15/2006 at 11:41 pm

I wouldn’t put too much stock in this. As companies both AOL/Netscape aren’t doing much now. They’re both pretty dead. I don’t think Digg has ANYTHING to worry about. This won’t go anywhere.

- Bryan
http://www.BryanCFleming.com
TDavid says:

6/16/2006 at 12:03 am

Bryan – I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Netscape has 811 million page views a month compared to digg’s 5 million. That’s not insignificant. Who here wouldn’t want to be Netscaped, really, with that kind of muscle?
Darren Rowse says:

6/16/2006 at 12:16 am

This will be an interesting graph to watch:
Paul Short says:

6/16/2006 at 1:04 am

This is my personal view and opinion – one I’ll undoubtedly suffer a ton of flack (and ‘rationalization’) for.

JC has been very publically vocal in the not-so-distant past about others copying ideas, business models, site themes, portions of sites and design/functionality, etc.

Doesn’t anyone else remember this?

Does anyone else, including the A-list bloggers and major tech sites/pundits not remember these instances???

Jeez, someone out on the web does something even similar to WIN and they get trounced by the head of the largest blogging network online, but the trouncers go and do an “almost clone” of Digg and they are heros.

Is ‘memory’ online that short or do all who spend too much time online have ADHD.

Again, this is my personal view and opinion – one I’ll undoubtedly suffer a ton of flack (and ‘rationalization’) for.
Aaron Brazell says:

6/17/2006 at 9:36 am

This definitely has all the markings of J-Cal…
iZeby says:

4/22/2009 at 4:36 am

I love social bookmarking, it is an awsome way to promote sites for free.