We’ve known about it for weeks (despite Netscape’s claims that our post was innacurate), but now it’s confirmed: AOL has announced the end of Netscape as a social news portal.
In a statement, Tom Drapeau spun the decision as being AOL listening to its customers and as part of their “desire to better serve our community.” On the decision itself, Drapeau stated:
We received some feedback that people really do associate the Netscape brand with providing mainstream news that is editorially controlled. In fact, we specifically heard that our users do have a desire for a social news experience, but simply didn’t expect to find it on Netscape.com.
The new (old) Netscape home page is not live quite yet, but can be viewed at netscape.aol.com. All traffic to Netscape.com will shortly be redirected to this site.
Drapeau claims that the social news service will go on at a new site, but failed to name the site or when it would be launched; certainly not a good sign for the current Netscape editorial team.
it will be missed very much – it was a good asset – the only flaw was that only a select few ever got anything on the homepage.
It appears that only friends voted or friends and top members only voted for each other
that’s a good decision;
netscape is too mainstream to simply become a digg clone – they’re better off being a general portal site like what yahoo is.
the new site is just yahoo + google search engine. Perfect combination?
have to say that the new (old) netscape.com is much more appealing to me in general, even though I am a total web 2.0 fanboy.
the new netscape.com sheared tons of value from the potential of the netscape.com brand, going back is a smart decision.
Who uses Netscape anyways? Netscape as a portal died with the browser.
It’s not that the mainstream isn’t ready for a site where users take an active role in determining what’s interesting to them,
The biggest mistake with Netscape IMHO was to think that it would work by applying a “in your face, take it or leave it” approach.
WEB, that’s the problem with all social news sites.
Nice article.
Anyone else notice that the layout for the netscape homepage is stolen from Yahoo? What the hell is that about?
So they decided to scrap their Digg clone and replace it with a Yahoo clone. Good for you AOL…
i liked netscape as a social news site but i always had problems logging in. I hated that i had to use an aol id. other than that the site was great.
g.
I cant believe that AOL is still trying to figure out what to do with Netscape.com! How many times is it going to be reborn and killed before they decide to do something good?
Why not just redirect it to AOL.com? Netscape is a dead company and a dead browser. Hell, the browser was dead YEARS ago. It seems like anything the Netscape name touches goes the hell – so stop using netscape for anything, at least until you figure out something useful to use the domain for.
Netscape is dead. Calacanis beats dead horses for his own profit.
As a Yahoo user I disagree with “Yahoo Clone”, frightening thing is, Yahoo is trying to clone AOL on http://www.yahoo.com page.
First time in history, browsers are recommended to view Yahoo.com main page. Back in time, they were trying to make it compatible as they can giving up some javascript tricks.
http://www.alex...;url=usopen.org
Says TC is as popular as netscape; heh – Good for TC really horrible for netscape.
Only IE under Vista is any good!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
It is sad. I stop using Netscape a long time ago. Mostly I do not use portals and that is the primary reason, but they were ahead of many for such a long time. But … it happens!!
Most people are over the age of 30, and that means that they do not have time for “socializing” on the net. The social networking craze is for young people whose time is not taken up by adult responsibilities.
By the way, I arrived at this post through http://www.traffick.com, which has a PR of 7. But I just noticed that they have set comments as “nofollow” and that explains why they receive so few comments. Just right click on their commebts page (while using Firefox) and chose “View Page Info”.
Here is what I said on traffick.com:
I guess that goes to show us that the generation that grew up with Netscape (and who has now grown old enough to be busy with responsibilities) has quit wasting time doing these so-called social things on the web.
….hmmm….I’m 31….have 2 kids and both a full time job and part time college. And I have active profiles on at least 4 different social networking sites. And somehow i manage to take care of my “adult responsibilities”
“nofollow” is used to stop the googlebot from crawling pages.
Sorry Dave, you must be sufferin’ from one of them bouts with senility in your old age, there.
Most Twitterers are in the 30-45 age demographic, and Twitter is like pretty far on the “fun but useless” end of the social media spectrum.
Another ValleyWag-style punchline from Duncan Riley.
You’re so happy to put a negative spin on everything, Duncan. Mike should just hand fuckedcrunch.com over to you.
@Dave, That’s bullshit.
It looks like Netscape is still trying to find the old glory days. Their only hope is to do something original and revolutionary, like when their browser was first released. Until then, they will just be a shadow of their former selves.
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Gosh.. So all my Netscape traffic is gone. Any idea why is this move?
http://www.techtalkz.com
The Netscape name is pretty much dead. However, it still gets you a guaranteed mention on all the internet-related news sites.
All these flip flops show one thing: none of these experiments have shown enough revenue for them to last a few quarters’ worth or ‘beta’. Matters not if some/any of us think it’s useful, or if some/any of us think the netscape brand means anything or has any value.
I don’t see how the new site will prosper either. It is an exact copy of Yahoo!
I would never use it for the reason alone. It’s plagiarism–and they get an ‘F’.
Geez, Duncan, you can’t even get the story right! What the hell! Every lame story or inaccurate headline comes back to you… cmon!
Headline: “Netscape Digg Clone Is Kaput”
Article that YOU linked to: “Don’t worry, the social news site isn’t going away!”
You really need to get a new job or get kicked in the pants. This is getting annoying!
Kaput doesn’t mean “moved”.
@can duncan
c’mon.. why always complaining…
Duncan is doing a GREAT JOB! I appreciate every single article he’s writing.
When I think of kaput i think of something that is not working.. something that is out of order or whatever… so what’s wrong with that?
Stop complaining… it’s a FREE SERVICE here…
There is a new site in private beta that is a tag based social news site with more emphasis on the social side of things. It’s http://www.tagsum.com and from what the developers tell me it should launch i nthe next week to 10 days. Great timing with the downfall of netscape. I’ve seen the site personally and think it tops digg and netscape in layout and usage.
hit & run…Calacanis style;)
The Mahalo page doesn’t have any updates:
http://www.mahalo.com/Netscape
This is just another form of censorship…news is out of the administration’s control, so they want it back.
I can see Kevin Rose’s on his face!
Yes Netscape browser is dead and I stop using Netscape browser, but Netscape as a social site is good.
I liked Netscape as a social site.
The http://www.tagsum.com still is not worked.
killed it!
Thats it! The name of it should be “Kaput!”
Ridiculous. You guys are stealing our words – it’s “kaputt”!!!
Another Calacanis project where the value is on the surface and the inside is empty. Anything goes as long as the numbers get run up enough to make a sale. What a legacy of crap that dude is leaving.
I guess that the attempts at bribing the top users didn’t pan out for the best. Having said that, Digg does feel to recyling a lot of content as its userbase grows, new users re-post stuff that’s months old by the standards of others. It would be nice if Netscape (or someone else) could combine the social news aspect with some form of editorial control.
It looks worse than Yahoo’s homepage.