MyNetscape (which is down as of 3 am PST) officially relaunches today as a customizable Ajax homepage for it’s users. The Netscape blog has details.
Like Netvibes, Pageflakes, GoogleIG, MyYahoo, Live.com and many, many others (who am I missing?), users will have the ability to choose from “just under 100 modules” of customized content, and add RSS modules for favorite feeds.
Netscape’s user base is not exactly cutting edge, and AOL is clearly taking good ideas from new startups and seeing if their users will consume them. Netscape became a Digg clone in mid-2006, and now my.netscape is to jump on the Ajax homepage bandwagon. It’s nothing to criticize them for, but it’s nothing to get excited about, either. The long, slow decline of this once great company continues.
See ReadWriteWeb for more, which asks “Can Netscape’s user base handle yet another web 2.0 overhaul?”
The way that the NetScape Website has reinvented and marketed itself is nothing less than Brilliant innovation –
it is still kinda hard to forgive Microsoft for their exposed browser strategies
It’s more like a Brilliant Ripoff for the nub users of AOL which really act like penguins ( lets all get in line and follow that idiot up front )
All the Brilliance left the Netscape crew a long damn time ago.
Sad decline…
Poor Netscape has had so many makeovers it’s like the Suzanne Somers of the tech world. On the other hand, Ajax is the Thighmaster of the age. Everbody’s gotta get one
i cant wait to see it
The new Netscape site is actually quite great. The level of intelligence in the conversations is very high, especially the political ones. I still hate the design and how they try to get you to not leave the site.
But I’d say applying “Web 2.0″ to a primarily non-techy is working out pretty well. They just need to hire a better designer.
> AOL is clearly taking good ideas from new startups and seeing if their
> users will consume them.
Not exactly; My.Netscape was one of the oldest personalizable homepages on the Web; it has simply been redesigned with newer technologies. You could say that those “new startups” took good ideas from Netscape.
Where or where is Calacanis when we need him most?! Surely he’ll take a break from “fat blogging” to “weigh in” (couldn’t resist…)
I second chris flake. Netscape invented customized homepage and was the ONLY customized homepage till Google News came along. Google News was inspired by MyNetscape as admitted by Krishna Bharat. Susequently Google developed Google.com/ig and then there was Live and now Netvibes Et al
First and foremost, their ‘edit’ links on their consoles do not work in firefox. Secondly, the UI is horrible, compared to netvibes it is a very very sad attempt.
What really gets me, is the lack of innovation from a company who has far superior resources then these startups. They have (or should have) the ability to build something far more superior, useful, and, profitable.
Someone needs to do some serious house cleaning over at netscape and get some new blood in there.
I hear Ajax is great for “cleaning house”, especially the kitchen sink.
My 65 year-old mother and other simplistic users will probably take to this quite well. There is little, if any, chance these users would have found or used anything from one of the “startups” mentioned; completely different target demographic.
Sidenote: How many boomers are there? How many use AOL? These people are scared to make any kind of financial transactions online, which makes it difficult to monetize this very large user base (w/ a lot of disposable income).
actually, this is just an improvement to their existing 8 yr old functionality… it was always drag & drop widgets. I guess many here are not familiar with mynetscape. They haven’t even revised the Add Content much
I think personalized homepage fits well with netscape usage than as a digg clone. Its because most of netscape’s current traffic is from its old users with browsers homepage set to netscape.com.
Honest question: Why are innovation and originality always valued over execution when it comes to web-apps? Very few products are anything more then improvements over already existing things. If Netscape’s plan is to sit back and see what web-features become popular with early-adopters and then integrate them in to their site, where their less adventurous users will embrace them, what’s the problem?
Some of the biggest, most profitable companies on earth do this exact sort of thing. It makes excellent business sense and saves a ton of money on R/D, regardless of industry.
Anyone else sick of reading about ajax start pages?
This is not very impressing. Netscape has to realize that other start pages are free so if they want to acquire users, they must create something significantly better (or acquire one of the successful start ups).
Note: This is sad because Mike Homer and his team layed out the foundation for RSS and personalized homepages more than 8 years ago! Eight long years. It is very difficult to wake up a product which has be put to sleep, this is why timing and execution is so important.
Netscape offering is not that impressive. First of all it has some usability issues. I could not find any place, where I can add my own RSS feeds.
This market is dominated by Google Personalized page & Netvibes and my guess is, they will continue to dominate this space.
Saket: It’s the RSS module, under Tools.
netscape’s index has been in the gutter for sometime.
i wouldn’t bank on them.
This is total crap. Netscape’s personal homepage may actually be worse than google’s — which is no easy trick. I’ve tried them all and am currently using pageflakes. I like to read my feeds in a series of personal homepages (tabs) rather than an RSS reader. I recently switched from netvibes to pageflakes. Either one leaves this netscape thing in the dust. Why even bother to release something this embarassingly bad? In particular:
1)It couldn’t recognize an atom feed. It has to be RSS.
2)There’s no preview or tooltip for the posts in each feed.
3)I see noplace to create multiple pages like the various tabs in netvibes, pageflakes or EVEN google’s personal homepage.
…this is when I quit. Netscape fails the test. Oh yeah…you CAN pick the color of the header bar in each feed. BFD.
Ugh.
I just did a video review (click my name)… I just don’t get it. And I don’t see any Web 2.0ness, I see Web .01 beta. Unless I am just missing it.
I also agree with Finn.
And why wouldn’t they put this with aol? It seems like a cheap ploy to get some more rss subs for their sites.
I didn’t realize why you used ‘Muck’ until I saw this: http://www.flic...lson/412982685/