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September 6, 2007

Netscape Digg Clone Is Kaput

Duncan Riley

46 comments »

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.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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Comments

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  1. WEB

    September 6th, 2007 at 10:42 pm

    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

  2. lawrence

    September 6th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

    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.

  3. Riko Kwe

    September 6th, 2007 at 10:53 pm

    the new site is just yahoo + google search engine. Perfect combination?

  4. ted

    September 6th, 2007 at 11:07 pm

    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.

  5. David Mackey

    September 6th, 2007 at 11:54 pm

    Who uses Netscape anyways? Netscape as a portal died with the browser.

  6. RBA

    September 7th, 2007 at 1:18 am

    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.

  7. Trench

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:08 am

    WEB, that’s the problem with all social news sites.

  8. Boilerplate

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:49 am

    Nice article.

  9. Tony Drummond

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:59 am

    Anyone else notice that the layout for the netscape homepage is stolen from Yahoo? What the hell is that about?

  10. greg

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:05 am

    So they decided to scrap their Digg clone and replace it with a Yahoo clone. Good for you AOL…

  11. gordon

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:13 am

    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.

  12. Bryan Migliorisi

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:17 am

    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.

  13. sunchild

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:27 am

    Netscape is dead. Calacanis beats dead horses for his own profit.

  14. Ilgaz

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:29 am

    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.

  15. rb

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:39 am

    http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....usopen.org

    Says TC is as popular as netscape; heh - Good for TC really horrible for netscape.

  16. Steve Ballmer

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:53 am

    Only IE under Vista is any good!

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  17. Fabian Schonholz

    September 7th, 2007 at 7:02 am

    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!!

  18. Dave

    September 7th, 2007 at 7:29 am

    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.

  19. stsve

    September 7th, 2007 at 7:45 am

    ….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.

  20. dionysus

    September 7th, 2007 at 8:12 am

    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.

  21. James Thomas

    September 7th, 2007 at 8:14 am

    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.

  22. Robert MacEwan

    September 7th, 2007 at 8:40 am

    @Dave, That’s bullshit.

  23. Old Times

    September 7th, 2007 at 8:57 am

    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.

    Visit http://www.newlifeauctions.com to learn how to start a successful eBay business.

  24. Hemanth

    September 7th, 2007 at 9:23 am

    Gosh.. So all my Netscape traffic is gone. Any idea why is this move?

    http://www.techtalkz.com

  25. Scaleicious

    September 7th, 2007 at 11:18 am

    The Netscape name is pretty much dead. However, it still gets you a guaranteed mention on all the internet-related news sites.

  26. nutty geek

    September 7th, 2007 at 11:40 am

    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.

  27. Josh

    September 7th, 2007 at 11:58 am

    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’.

  28. can duncan

    September 7th, 2007 at 12:36 pm

    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”.

  29. Marco

    September 7th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    @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…

  30. Josh

    September 7th, 2007 at 1:08 pm

    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.

  31. ron

    September 7th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

    hit & run…Calacanis style;)

  32. JD

    September 7th, 2007 at 1:21 pm

    The Mahalo page doesn’t have any updates:

    http://www.mahalo.com/Netscape

  33. Bjorn

    September 7th, 2007 at 1:25 pm

    This is just another form of censorship…news is out of the administration’s control, so they want it back.

  34. DinoHorse

    September 7th, 2007 at 2:04 pm

    I can see Kevin Rose’s on his face!

  35. Jason

    September 7th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

    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.

  36. nabin

    September 7th, 2007 at 7:51 pm

    killed it!

  37. David

    September 8th, 2007 at 6:07 am

    Thats it! The name of it should be “Kaput!”

  38. till

    September 8th, 2007 at 8:59 pm

    Ridiculous. You guys are stealing our words - it’s “kaputt”!!! ;)

  39. Brian

    September 9th, 2007 at 2:33 pm

    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.

  40. Jeff

    September 9th, 2007 at 5:48 pm

    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.

  41. Mike

    September 9th, 2007 at 11:09 pm

    It looks worse than Yahoo’s homepage.

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