Netscape Beta
June 16th, 2006
The new Netscape Beta homepage has been getting quite a lot of press over the last day. It’s been described as a Digg killer. It’s also been described as AOL’s "Web 2.0" homepage, but it seems to be like an ugly Web 2.0 imitation site built with Web 1.0 principles (god I hate the term "Web 2.0" but it gets the point across).
I’m actually not sure why anyone uses Netscape.com anymore as nobody uses a Netscape browser these days and I can’t see anyone actually choosing to use the current Netscape.com.
My initial thoughts on the site:
- There are tons of adverts. Well actually it’s not that bad but the amount of noise on the page makes it feel much more clustrophobic and makes it appear as if there are a lot more ads then there really are. Digg has a much neater and cleaner design.
- Hot Stories seem to be ordered by the number of people who have voted in the last 24 hours or something. This means the top store I saw yesterday happens to be the same as the top story today. I prefer Digg’s ordering or stories by the time it was promoted by.
- Netscape seem to want to keep you on their site. When you click on the story title, you get given the news and discussion page. If you click "Visit this Site", you get the site but not only is it in a new window, it’s also framed. And the frame isn’t unobtrusive - it takes up half the screen.
- There doesn’t seem to be much actual user participation. This should be expected though as it is a Beta. For the same reason, most of the news on there at the moment is about Technology as only people in technology are actually using the new Netscape site right now.
- It seems like Netscape wants to be seen as a content provider and wants to keep users on it’s own site. It provides a link to the source only because if it didn’t people would be a bit annoyed.
- There doesn’t actually seem to be any news. Maybe Netscape should seed the queue by having it automatically populated with news entries from sources such as Yahoo! Again, it’s possible the lack of content won’t be a problem when it goes live.
- The editorial control is, IMO, a good thing. I still find that the quality of articles on Slashdot tends to be better than on Digg. Digg is hardly unbiased since it’s full of Apple fanboys. Editorial staff might be able to do the job a little better.
- There should really be more to an article description than one line.
In conclusion, I believe Netscape.com Beta isn’t close to being a Digg killer, it isn’t much more 2.0 than the old site and it disappoints.
- AOL in the UK is being sold and is most likely being purchased by Sky.