The new Netscape takes obvious cues from sites like del.icio.us and digg.com. But will it add up to a better browser?
Netscape users have until the end of the month to get used to the look and feel of the version that is now in beta testing. Netscape has chosen July 1st to end the beta phase and launch the new site, which takes cues from Digg.com, del.icio.us, and social-networking services.
AOL is revamping its Netscape.com Web portal to give visitors a greater role in determining what news articles get readily shown to others–not Netscape.com editors. Netscape Communications, a division of AOL, says it will be ditching its current tickertape infotainment portal for the new format to attract new Netscape.com visitors and keep them there longer.
Netscape also is borrowing from blogs by having paid editors–dubbed "anchors" in a nod to broadcast journalism–comment on stories. The site is even taking it a step further by having its editors fact check news stories and do some additional reporting to provide background or further context, said Jason Calacanis, who co-founded blog publisher Weblogs Inc., which AOL bought last year.
This is a new type of journalism, Calacanis said in a recent interview with CNET News.com. "I think its’ a risk-taking, bold step by AOL.
Netscape says that a link to the beta site is available from its main page. The revved version of Netscape.com is slated to go live July 1. Users must register to submit and post stories. The site accepts users with existing Netscape, AOL, and AOL AIM log-ins and passwords.
The new Netscape.com strategy attempts to follow the success of social-bookmarking sites like Digg and Slashdot. Both of these technology sites rely on visitors to compile lists of links to interesting new articles.
Visitors will be able to submit links to neat articles they find elsewhere and vote on the ones they like most. The items receiving the most votes will appear on the home page as well as in separate sections focusing on technology, food and other topics.
The effort comes as the Time Warner Inc. Internet unit attempts to boost traffic to its ad-supported Web sites as its access-subscription business declines.
Calacanis knew he wanted to do a news site that featured reader participation, but said he got the idea to have some editorial oversight when he read complaints about lack of transparency at Digg. A reader suspected Digg editors of gaming the site by pushing stories up without merit, or allowing readers to. Digg denied the accusation.
Calacanis said. "I was watching the controversy about Digg and I thought I would just put an editor on top of it to check the facts."
Editors to Fact-Check Stories
"It is a smart way to differentiate themselves from Yahoo News and Google News and the CNBCs and big portal sites," said Bryan Keefer, assistant managing editor of CJR Daily of the Columbia Journalism Review. CJR Daily also has editors who scrutinize the media.
Calacanis says that, unlike competing social-bookmarking sites, Netscape.com has hired a mix of journalists and citizen journalists to comment on the day’s top stories and fact-check them to make sure they are genuine. The group of Netscape Anchors, as they are called, will also give their editorial opinions on the most popular user-submitted stories and will add links to related Web content, Calacanis says.
Netscape is employing eight full-time anchors and 15 part-time specialists who will be giving "special treatments" to a couple of stories each day, he said.
Netscape.com will have 30 different content channels, including food, news, travel, sports, celebrity news, and health. For example, the anchor for the food and travel channel called a chef to get his response to a negative restaurant review. Another anchor called a New York Times columnist to ask about her motivation for writing a mean-spirited column about a celebrity.
Calacanis said the voter choices may also appear on other AOL properties. For instance, while the top articles on autos would be central to Netscape’s auto channel, the same list could appear as part of AOL.com’s auto section and the AOL-owned Autoblog Web journal.
"It will ruffle a few feathers" among journalists, Calacanis predicted.
Anchors will also appear on live video and have chats with readers about stories, he said. Users can also upload video. Readers will be able to track other reader activity, to see who submitted items and what they voted and commented on, he said.
The articles themselves would not necessarily be stored on AOL computers. Rather, visitors who submit links are directed to write a summary that would appear on the Netscape page. Readers can get the full article by clicking on a link to the original site.
The outside articles appear as frames within the Netscape site, a technique over which major news organizations had sued a small news referral site in the mid-90s. The site, called TotalNews, stopped that practice as part of a settlement.
Calacanis said Netscape should not run into similar problems because its site would not carry ads on the pages using frames.
Netscape, owned by AOL, has been in need of a makeover for some time. Though Netscape spokesman Andrew Weinstein says Netscape has 11.4 million users, it still trails in the browser and portal market behind Microsoft, Mozilla, Yahoo!, and Google. The new site is the brainchild of Jason Calacanis, founder of the company formerly known as Weblogs, which Netscape purchased last fall.
Before the re-launch, Netscape.com was a lackluster news repository, heavy with bullet points and headlines for items with titles like "Drunk Dictionary: Translate the Slurs" and "The Right Way to Touch Your Date."
Social media is a good way of basically getting a very broad reach of the stuff that is out there and moving it to the top of awareness, so this actually adds a layer of fact-checking and completeness, Weinstein said. "It really completes the circle almost by moving news further down the field to help the user understand what is going on with it. It is more of a Web 2.0 environment."
The redesign is Netscape’s first major one since early 2005, when the portal introduced features that heavily used Flash animation technology in response to growing adoption of high-speed Internet lines (many of those features since have been quietly dropped).
Netscape.com will still have links to weather, e-mail and other features commonly associated with portals, but they will not be as prominent. The portal also will have some items hand-picked, vetted and in many cases amplified with original reporting by AOL staff, but they will be drawn from the user-voted pool.
Near the bottom of the page is a tag cloud, much like the del.icio.us format. Weinstein mentioned that users can also tag and save stories, network within the tagging community MySpace-style, and even post YouTube-like videos.
Since AOL acquired it in 1998, Netscape has undergone many facelifts. AOL turned the Netscape portal–dubbed NetCenter–into a hub for showcasing Web sites owned by AOL parent company Time Warner.
AOL tried different things with the Netscape brand and operations, including launching Netbusiness, a site aimed at small businesses, and later a Netbusiness online magazine. Netscape also launched an alliance with Sun Microsystems to merge Internet products and services under a brand called iPlanet and launched Netscape ISP, a discount Internet service.
AOL itself has been revamped numerous times following its merger with Time Warner in 2000; most recently last year with the launch of a new AOL.com.
That will set Netscape.com apart from digg.com and other sites that engage in what Calacanis called "social news" – tapping the collective wisdom of a community to uncover items that might otherwise be hard to find. Placements of stories on other sites are entirely up to users.
Really, it was only a matter of time before social networking met tagging and news. Companies such as imeem and TagWorld are certainly working hard to combine these functionalities, but who will be the big guns in the game still remains to be seen. Netscape has the corporate backing, but to some, the Netscape name is a bit of a dinosaur. Weinstein said that the company hopes to woo the more creative and interactive Internet users first, hoping the rest will follow.
Ironically, the top story voted up on the beta’s homepage lately was news of the new site. Digg enthusiasts chimed in with comments expressing their angst at the "copying of Digg." Calacanis, general manager of Netscape, posted the following rebuttal:
"We did not create the New Netscape to copy DIGG, no more than DIGG copied Delicious or Delicious copied Furl. All of these sites are evolutions of the first wave of bookmarking services. The key thing we are doing different is that we are having our editorial team followup on stories that make it to the top 20 list. We’re not doing this to become gatekeepers, but rather to add a journalist process to the power of social bookmarking. You can call this metajournalism or social journalism, and I think it’s the logical next step."
Yahoo also is introducing user-voted items as part of a redesign, but the new Yahoo Pulse feature remains a small section of the overall home page.
Netscape hopes to offer more, with tie-ins to a nascent social-networking feature also part of the new Netscape.com plan. Users will be able to create simple profiles and create lists of "friends" with similar interests.
You can check out the beta for yourself at http://www.beta.netscape.com.