The rebirth of Netscape
After months of hard work, my old boss Jason has finally launched his “digg killer” on AOL’s Netscape.com. And it looks like he’s off to a good start. While the site may borrow its basic premise of allowing users to create and prioritize news items from digg, it goes far beyond its progenitor in functionality and scope. For one thing, Netscape.com has about 30 channels, most of them non-tech related, while digg has built its base solely on tech news (digg promises to add more categories soon, but it may be a case of too little, too late). More importantly, Jason has added a layer of human moderation on top of the community-driven content, providing a level of quality control that should help Netscape.com to avoid some of the “madness of the crowds” that’s reared its head on digg from time to time. With its early message boards, chat rooms and IM service, AOL practically invented online social networking, and has also long been a leader in recognizing that it isn’t technology that gets most consumers excited, it’s content that appeals to them—especially if it’s content they can help create themselves. So, Jason may just have a hit on his hands. No, it won’t kill digg any more than digg killed Slashdot. But digg was going to have a hard time expanding beyond its techie early-adopter base to begin with, and Jason’s just made it that much harder.
