Comments on: MyNetscape to Launch Today: More Ajaxy Muck

By: Startup Meme » My.Netscape Clones Netvibes

Startup Meme » My.Netscape Clones Netvibes — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:25:01 +0000

[...] Techcrunch and ReadWriteWeb for more. Tags:mynetscape netscape personalized homepage Share and [...]

By: Don Wilson

Don Wilson — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 22:03:17 +0000

I didn’t realize why you used ‘Muck’ until I saw this: http://www.flic...lson/412982685/

By: Allen Stern

Allen Stern — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:53:26 +0000

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.

By: Finn

Finn — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 20:09:03 +0000

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.

By: ...some Drifter

...some Drifter — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:45:48 +0000

netscape’s index has been in the gutter for sometime.

i wouldn’t bank on them.

By: Christopher Finke

Christopher Finke — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:40:32 +0000

Saket: It’s the RSS module, under Tools.

By: Saket Kumar

Saket Kumar — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:27:28 +0000

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.

By: Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin Khodabakchian — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:20:49 +0000

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.

By: Alex Smith

Alex Smith — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:55:53 +0000

Anyone else sick of reading about ajax start pages?

By: Colin Dowling

Colin Dowling — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:41:55 +0000

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.

By: Gopi

Gopi — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:58:54 +0000

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.

By: RYK

RYK — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:29:57 +0000

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

By: bdb

bdb — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:19:55 +0000

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).

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:50:42 +0000

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.

By: RYK

RYK — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:50:33 +0000

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

By: Sprague Dawley

Sprague Dawley — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:47:24 +0000

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…)

By: Christopher Finke

Christopher Finke — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:25:59 +0000

> 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.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:01:41 +0000

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.

By: mugile

mugile — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:00:10 +0000

i cant wait to see it

By: Hasan Jafri

Hasan Jafri — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:55:38 +0000

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

By: Yohay

Yohay — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:18:24 +0000

Sad decline…

By: RawGutts

RawGutts — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:23:53 +0000

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.

By: SearcH EngineSWeB

SearcH EngineSWeB — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:08:20 +0000

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