It looks like AOL’s relaunch of Netscape is underway. At this point it’s happening as a beta at http://www.beta.netscape.com/.
First impressions
- They are obviously looking to compete pretty directly with Digg but on a wider range of topics (or channels). Their ‘votes’ set up is very digg-ish.
- One thing I don’t like is that the main links on each story point to a Netscape page and not directly to the site that the story is from. They do have a ‘via’ link that links back to the source but it’s much smaller than the main story headline. It seems like they are trying to keep people on the site rather than sharing the link love like other social bookmarking sites.
- Lots of Advertising – I bet there will be some criticism of this
- They must be doing some serious traffic already as it’s all running quite slow for me and I’ve not had any success in registering yet.
Amusingly the top story there at the moment is one titled ‘AOL Copies Digg’ (it had to happen). Netscape is part user generated (and voted) and part edited content. It’ll be interesting to watch it develop and to see whether social bookmarking fans will embrace it or whether they’ll stick to the original versions of this type of site.
You can read more about the new Netscape at:
