AOL-Netscape Launches Massive “Digg Killer”

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1. Don Wilson
   

   June 14th, 2006 at 7:52 pm

   Any chance we can get a full size screenshot instead of a barely-viewable picture like the current one?

2. Michael Arrington
   

   June 14th, 2006 at 7:54 pm

   yes - http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.g.....038;size=o

3. eric
   

   June 14th, 2006 at 7:56 pm

   I think they could have fit a few more ads on the site… but that is just me.

4. ted
   

   June 14th, 2006 at 8:00 pm

   Cool. As Yahoo Answers has shown, when web 2.0 concepts get integrated and refined by the big boys, there is a chance to bring some cool stuff to people who otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. And Netscape’s traffic numbers are still massive, despite a very long decline.

5. Don Wilson
   

   June 14th, 2006 at 8:07 pm

   eric, these sites run ads for a reason. They’re not just there to serve as a nuisance.

6. NuPi
   

   June 14th, 2006 at 8:14 pm

   You can see the actual site at:
   http://www.beta.netscape.com/

7. Paul Montgomery
   

   June 14th, 2006 at 8:26 pm

   The 9pm PST deadline got pushed back? Boo.

8. Jon Gales
   

   June 14th, 2006 at 8:26 pm

   Interesting that you need to register for the site, opposed to using the existing membership system AOL/Netscape runs. Probably because of the speedy development, but it would have been smart to integrate it in. If you’re getting 10M user sessions for free, why try and frustrate them by requiring another registration?

   The site’s evidently running off of PHP and I’m guessing will have some growing pains. It’s already slowing down and it has only been live for a few minutes. According to the NYT much of the development happened in a crazy hotel coding session. Luckily it’s housed on beta.netscape.com for a few more weeks, otherwise the traffic would get really crazy.

9. Jack
   

   June 14th, 2006 at 8:28 pm

   Excellent, now people can *vote* on the trashy content they’re used to seeing on netscape.com. Strangely, voting on the hotness of the ‘daily bimbo’ on netscape.com was never considered ‘web 2.0′.

10. Richard MacManus
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 8:37 pm

    um, is it just me or are all the main links pointing to internal Netscape pages? The actual site where the content came from has a tiny “via” link. I don’t see how that’s going to be the equivalent of a Slashdotting or Digging. In fact, seems a bit too portal-ish for my tastes - keep the punters inside the netscape site.

11. Nick Pang | Wii Preorder
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 8:58 pm

    @macmanus

    looks like all stories are hosted on netscape.com in a frame. you can vote on anything though. i see some stories from joystiq, youtube, etc. only the ‘tiny link’ goes to the source - not really a great traffic generator per say…

12. Mic Edwards
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 9:26 pm

    @Nick Pang

    ‘per se’, not ‘per say’ …

13. Nick Pang | Wii Preorder
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 9:29 pm

    @mic edwards

    thanks for correcting my spelling

14. Bill Gates
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 9:45 pm

    I’ll just buy it and make it a LIVE product.

15. Jordan
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 9:48 pm

    I’d never visit this site. It’s just another trashy copycat, but with ridiculous amounts of ads. All digg ever used is a small google ad-sense bar at the top of the site and they do fine. Then again, the revision3 guys are smart, not greedy asses. Also, I dislike the idea of an “anchor”, because that’s the same as having an editor for a regular news site, only he has all the work done for him by the visitors. With digg, it’s really in the hands of the people.

16. mdew
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 9:52 pm

    got enough ads? geez

17. Patrick Crowley
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 10:03 pm

    Yeah, good luck on that, AOL.

    (Note to self: using “killer” to describe your product usually means it will have almost no effect on its intended target.”)

18. Don Omar
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 10:04 pm

    Sounds like digg is in big troule.

19. justin
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 10:05 pm

    finally someone is doing this. now i wont have to read about 3 stories on the front page about what someone did to their NES controller today. a cell phone wow! anchors can pick worthwhile stories while interesting stories that somone else stumbles on can also gain in popularity. thanks for saving me from the pricks at digg.com

20. Jon
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 10:11 pm

    “There are a number of other notable features of the new Netscape. ”

    … Yes. A dozen obnoxious flashing GIF ads.

    Seriously–could they possibly squeeze any more ads in there.

    I’d have to tune up my Adblock extension quite a bit to survive at that site.

21. Don Wilson
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 10:18 pm

    How about modifying these sites to block people who just mindlessly repost links to Engadget/Joystiq a day or two later. I think that would cut down on a lot of crap inserted into the digg feed.

22. dan
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 10:21 pm

    Pshh.. your shit wont fly, AOL.

23. 孙悟空
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 11:02 pm

    像AOL这样的公司能做出这个东西，给我们很大启示。至于中文的吗，看看

    http://www.buzzcn.com

24. elamb
    

    June 14th, 2006 at 11:57 pm

    Looks like all the stars are out:

    The one and only Bill Gates on these comments
    http://www.zejn.si/~natan/666.html

    Jason Calacanis with his pom poms rooting for AOL
    http://www.google.com/services.....blogs.html

    Wil “freakin’” Wheaton on Digg (guess he’s just a geek).
    http://www.digg.com/technology.....gg-Killer_

25. other
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 12:25 am

    “Any chance we can get a full size screenshot instead of a barely-viewable picture like the current one?”

    Why, Don? Haven’t you gotten used to TechCrunch’s lovely miniscule thumbnails that you *CAN’T* click and expand into something viewable? It’d so chic!

26. independent
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 12:55 am

    justin makes excellent points. there was room for competition, because digg had a good idea but never opened it up outside the gaming community. netscape can now do what they should have done when aol bought them. now aol, bring back gnn!

27. Jonathan
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 1:04 am

    I wonder if they tried looking at this in IE7?

    Not a big deal for a beta launch though given IE/Netscape history I guess…
    

28. BK
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 1:24 am

    can techcrunch handle the AOLigg effect?

29. garrett
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 1:29 am

    I’d personally say that the new Netscape holds more similarities with NewsVine than Digg, it will be interesting to see how well the site does compared with the established players in the field.

30. Jay Adair
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 1:55 am

    The netscape site isn’t as smooth as the Digg one, and for me, that plays a big part in which sites I come to. It’s the designer streak in me, or the vain one, I get mixed up I’m also surprised netscape.com is still around, they’re like a fallen eagle on the web, akin to Real Networks (why is that still going as well??).

31. Ma_rio
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 2:00 am

    Easy to remember how Yahoo created its own social bookmarks stuff, then acquired the real toy.
    I am not sure if there are other examples of clone-then-buy. Could be some kind of pattern.
    -
    Congrats for the 1-year mark.

32. Kosso
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 2:16 am

    surely it will be up to the users and visitors to decide if it’s a diggkiller?

    not a bad design though - but way too much advertising. though possibly Americans are much more used to FAR FAR too much advertising than we are in Europe - I’m always totally amazed the sheer amount of ads that get thrown onto TV, radio, mags etc in the usa. We would find it offensive and tantamount to ‘junk’ - we tune it out.

    But I expect Netscape and AOL have the media/ad space buyers and sellers all hooked up - so why care?

    Looking forward to seeing the quality of news it throws my way - via a feed or two

33. Jay Adair
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 2:20 am

    Good point Kosso, I’ve seen that as well, Europeans have a far lower threshold for advertisment placement. I can’t watch American TV, there’s more adverts than content! I think we get a fairly healthy balance here in the UK, though there’s less channels around.

34. Kosso
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 2:30 am

    wow. i just went and had a good look around the beta site - still a few glitches in layout code (to be expected at this stage) but I have to say, it makes my eyes hurt - they have no idea where to look next! They were begging me to leave. Blessed be the tranquility of rss feeds.

    The phrase that spings to mind (all too often recently) is ‘Attack of the Clones’ - sure there is *some* innovation there with the Anchors [no prizes for guessing what the detractors will call them, eventually ] - if only I could see through all those ads.

    and if I see another clone of YouTube, I’m going to scream!

35. Seamus
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 3:23 am

    I’m just tickled by the fact that the third most popular story on the site at the moment is an anti-AOL rant by one of the many AOL ISP customers who encountered problems cancelling his sub…

36. Sam
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 3:48 am

    This is going nowhere.

    Check the sign up form:

    http://flickr.com/photos/94136972@N00/167623898

    1, 3, 4.

37. aaron wall
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 4:01 am

    The fact that they put ads in the middle of the comments prior to getting the comments formating function even remotely close to working speaks volumes for the quality and goals of the site, IMHO.

38. UsedToWorkAtNS
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 4:38 am

    This will just quicken the death of NS. (which as we all know has been a long slow dreadfull process)

39. nick
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 4:40 am

    Hmm, thats interesting.
    A step up in terms of functionality from Digg possibly/maybe - but the ads may kill it and the heavy experience.

    I built http://www.feedgeek.net to achieve similar sharing functionality for myself (other geeks wanted it, so its going online slowly)…

40. Khang Toh
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 4:40 am

    Look at all the noise (ads) all over the page, i think people still have not realize why sites like digg and google has attracted so much users, its because of how ads are displayed.

41. mark
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 4:49 am

    Massive digg killer …. hahahaha. Very funny title for sure.

42. GRex
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 5:31 am

    Interestingly, the headlines seems to be less geeky. If it’s gonna stay that way, it could be a pretty decent differentiator.

    But one thing turn out to be a deal-breaker for me: “visit the site” load the site on a frame. If they do that to encourage me to vote, that’s a bad design call. Doing it that way kills the experience. I’d much rather go back to previous browser tab to vote.

43. Thai Bui
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 6:34 am

    If the editorial panel can keep things less geeky than Digg, I agree, that will be a differentiator. Despite Digg’s popularity in certain circles, most people still have no idea what it is, and clearly a lot more people have heard of Netscape. The editorial panel can keep non-geeks interested enough to vote non-geek stories to the top and *shazaam* you have a broader reach than Digg.

44. BiZwiKi.CN
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 6:35 am

    Ha, what can I say? What a killer ! Yes, nice title.

45. Hagge
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 7:22 am

    Is Netscape.com really that much bigger? According to Alexa it’s way smaller than digg.com but i’ll admit that I don’t know how good Alexa-stats would work on a site like netscape.com.

    http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....tscape.com

46. Shawn
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 7:45 am

    All the ads make me sick

47. Serge Lescouarnec
    

    June 15th, 2006 at 8:01 am

    I just tried it.

    Posted my story on ‘Hot Air Ballon rides over Loire Valley Castles’ from my blog ‘Serge the Concierge’

    The sign up and submitting a story was a smooth process.
    I put the story in their ‘Food and Travel’ section.

    I will see if it brings me additional readers as Reddit, NowPublic and CraigsList do.

    Take care

    SERGE
    Biz:
    http://www.njconcierges.com
    Blog:
    http://www.sergetheconcierge.com

48. Ping Liang