It started as a rumbling

Things heated up yesterday, when it was reported that many of the fans of the old Netscape were voicing dissent at the imposition of this new style of news that was more community-oriented. Many didn’t like the new format - they wanted a tried and true format such as the previous portal, where things tended to be more organized. To many people (especially Digg fans), this may seem weird, even somewhat backwards - but whatever it is, it’s the mainstream. Evidently the community-oriented web 2.0-style news site touted by many as revolutionary, is in the minority.

The outspoken leader of the new Netscape, Jason Calacanis, made a quick response, which was also editorially promoted on the Netscape website. (Editors there have a say on which stories get pinned to the top, unlike Digg, where apparently there are no editors.) Here’s a nice quote that summed up his feelings.

Look at it this way: if Geocities could change itself to MySpace before losing it’s marketshare to MySpace you would do that right?

Same thing here, we’re in the middle of paradigm shift from top-down control to bottom-up participation, and when you make a radical change like that you’re gonna get pushback. In fact, I’m really excited to see the pushback because it let’s me know we are on the right track.

Ah, one of the fabled promises and features of web 2.0 - user participation. For some applications this really has succeeded, such as Flickr, and of course, blogging. But what many fail to see is that these trends are not mainstream - not by any total measure. While Flickr certainly is popular, it is by no means the most popular photosharing service, despite offering many web 2.0 features considered by many (including myself) to be useful, time-saving, nifty, or otherwise cool. The same thing goes for blogging - while it seems like the blogosphere is huge, it by no means comprises a significant section of all online users.

Calacanis’ own statements didn’t seem to carry much weight when, soon after, he appeared to be calling for a truce, offering a “professional”, alternate version of the site for the old school crowd. And now, today, he is offering $1000 a month to users of Digg (and other social news sites) to come over to Netscape and post their links to stories/news items there instead.

Making money in the web 2.0 world

At first, such an offer seems absurd. But when you hear some people’s explanations, it makes sense - after all, they would be paid for doing a service, and what’s wrong with that? However, after more thinking, the idea does turn out to be absurd. The new Netscape and Digg are sites that are meant to be community-oriented; supposedly by the people, for the people. If some are getting paid, and some aren’t, that makes things very absurd. At the very least, Calacanis’ offer makes the new Netscape seem very desperate to gain popularity, which it apparently has had trouble doing.

The problem here stems from several factors. Firstly, Netscape entered the game way too late - they are attempting to gain an advantage in a niche market dominated by Digg, Delicious and others - and for many in this market, the idea of “editorial control” turns them off. They want something like Digg, that at the very least gives the impression of full control by the people.

Secondly, while they didn’t fully copy Digg, the parts they did change were not for the better. Besides the aforementioned editorial control, Netscape also aims to serve up stories from all topics, not just technology as the original Digg did. This doesn’t match up with the niche market that the new Netscape is attempting to gain entry into. If Digg users are any indication, the average user is extremely tech-saavy, meaning they’re interested in, you guessed it, tech-oriented news. Even after Digg added other categories besides tech news, tech news still dominates almost all of the news that makes the front page.

Thus, the new Netscape is effectively orphaned some where in between web 2.0 and mainstream, appealing to neither and garnering criticism from both - a sort of “worst of both worlds” situation. This has evidently manifested itself in its less than impressive traffic numbers, and the seemingly desperate actions of Jason Calacanis.

AOL bearing down?

The actions of Mr. Calacanis may not be due entirely to himself. As the guy behind the idea for the new Netscape, which must have been born out of AOL’s desire to increase their ad revenue, he’s facing much pressure to get his baby to produce and be successful. He may be worried about having to take the fall if the site fails. With all the resources of AOL, perhaps it’s no surprise that he’s throwing money in every direction trying to solve the problem.

I sort of feel sorry for him - I do believe him to be an intelligent person, but perhaps just a bit misguided and obviously under a lot of pressure from AOL to produce something popular. If there’s any lesson to be learned from this unfortunate situation, it’s that offering snazzy web 2.0 features does not mean your website will be successful or popular in the mainstream, because, well, web 2.0 just isn’t mainstream.

At first glance, it just appears to be a Digg-clone. But looking closer, you’ll see that the top stories must be selected by an “anchor” - a member of the staff of the site, who works either full or part time. This separates it from Digg, in which the placement of stories is purely determined by community votes or “diggs”. Anchors can also post their commentaries on the story, which gets more precendence than user comments. In this way, they hope that a mob mentality can be avoided, which is one of the unfortunate side-effects of massive online communities, and is akin to “GroupThink”.

But perhaps the most visible difference is the fact that the new Netscape site, although linking to off-site stories, still wants to keep you at their site, no doubt for ad-revenue. While wanting to make money isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it can be frustrating for users who click on a story, expecting to be taken to the site; currently, when one does this, it opens a new window that is still pointing to Netscape’s site, but displays the target site using frames. (Yes, the frames we all know and hate from the 1990’s.) You have to click “close this frame” to get the site alone.

Criticisms aside, the site isn’t too bad. And, it’s interesting note that significant number of major stories on the site during the launch covered the launch or its comparison to Digg. A few of them also linked to Digg! Interestingly, a top story on Digg during that day also pointed to the beta of Netscape, thus creating a (recursive?) loop of Internet links for top stories.