Netscape.com Loses Its Identity 148
wh0pper writes "Digital Trends has a great opinion piece about how Netscape has lost its identity again in regards to their wanna-be Digg portal. One interesting fact I was not aware of is that Jason Calacanis is the person behind the new beta Netscape portal. A choice quote: 'If this business model sees the light-day and it looks like it will, Netscape readers will change from the baby-boomers of yester-year to a younger audience more interested in Jessica Alba's Bikini or Britney Spears than real intellectual news.' I've tried using the new beta Netscape site, and personally hate it. The little link to the external site and the frame to keep you on Netscape's site are deal killers for me. Does the general audience think it can compete?"
Net-who? (Score:5, Interesting)
They seem to have bought the company mainly to use the browser as a bargaining chip against Microsoft ("We'll switch to Mozilla if you don't give us a good deal!"). Since they secured the new deal for the IE engine and jettisoned the browser development staff they've abandoned Netscape-the-browser at least twice, both times changing their minds. There was the surprise release of (IIRC) Netscape 7.2, which as near as I can tell involved merging the latest Mozilla Suite with their local tree, and then there was the outsourced chimera of Netscape 8.
They aren't interested in Netscape the browser, but they have this brand name that they don't want to waste, and they keep trying to come up with something to do with it. They tried it as a classic portal, they tried it as a low-cost dialup service, they tried it as a webmail service, they tried it as a toolbar, now they're chasing another trend, trying to jam the square peg into yet another shaped hole.
It makes about as much sense as it would make for, say, Coca-Cola to buy Dr. Pepper, then retire the soft drink flavor and start marketing Dr. Pepper spice racks.
(Oh, and Britney Spears -- does the youth audience still care about her, or is she already passe?)
Re:Net-who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Aha! So that's why Paris, Britney, and Jessica are featured so prominently.
Seriously. From the current netscape.com [netscape.com] front page, at least a third of the content is of the form...
That's not a brand. It's a cheap rehash of Cosmo [cosmopolitan.com].
It is, however, unsurprising, considering the demographics of AOL's customer base.
Re:Net-who? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Net-who? (Score:2)
Why not just jump to the final step in cheesy exploitation of a brand:
NETSCAPE: The MusicalThey bought Netscape for the visitors... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Net-who? (Score:1)
"Who do you like better, Kimberly, the Spice Girls or the Britney Spears? Well, yeah, I guess they are a little 20th century."
--- Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie
Re:Net-who? (Score:2)
Re:Net-who? (Score:2)
It only exists on my machine to test sites on, though I must say it didn't cause my machine to totally fail. Perhaps it just didn't play nice with something else pre-installed?
Re:Net-who? (Score:2)
Re:Net-who? (Score:2)
Re:Net-who? (Score:2)
(Oh, and Britney Spears -- does the youth audience still care about her, or is she already passe?)
Not to be mean to her or anything, but I don't know that Britney will remain popular for much longer. I understand she's pregnant, but the photo of her on the BBC [bbc.co.uk] leaves me pretty unimpressed. It's been a while since Toxic. [google.com]
Re:Net-who? (Score:2)
I know it's bad form to reply to your own comment, but I had to share. It's amazing what you can find on Google video. I was looking for a copy of the 'Toxic' music video, but instead I found Yoda. [google.com] Um, that's just ... wrong?
Age based? (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought this sort of vapid interest was not delimited to certain generations.
Re:Age based? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Age based? (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:4, Informative)
Then, Microsoft came to the party and knocked out the entire industry by illegally bundling competitors to all three of these pre-.com-era startups. Where are these players now?
RealNetworks still exists, but their proprietary audio/video codecs are used by nobody other than their bloatware RealOne product. Rhapsody is an also-ran in the digital music world.
Trumpet? They're still supporting networking for 3.1, 95, 98, and NT [trumpet.com.au], but they've never had another must-have hit the size Trumpet Winsock and likely never will again.
And Netscape? They've officially deemed that there's no money to be made making a browser, and gave what they had for source code over to the Open Source community still uses the basics in the form of Mozilla. Netscape.com is just a domain that Time Warner keeps reformating. They've tried it as a cut-rate ISP, but United Online's Netzero and Juno have that game covered? They've tried it as a portal site, but realized that was redundant to AOL.com. So now they're trying it as a Digg knockoff... let's see how long that one lasts.
In reality, these companies deserved a better fate. Too bad as soon as the Bush 1.01 administration came in, the Clinton Justice Department's case suddenly died. At least the EU is still trying to take a bite...
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course you were probably the first in line to bash them for not including something so basic.
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:3, Insightful)
M$ owes Trumpet a lot; the reason everybody bought Win 3.1 machines for the Internet was because of Trumpet. Plus, their winsock was better than Microsoft's: easier to use, more flexible.
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:4, Insightful)
Trumpet needs to go away, if only to finally kill off the old dead versions of Windows. The one advantage of something that old is that apparently, nobody bothers to try and virus them anymore.
As for Netscape? Cool name, but that's about it. Time to send it out to pasture.
These companies did not deserve a better fate. They weren't fast enough, smart enough, mean enough or have deep enough pockets to be real contenders in the market.
The one good thing that came out of all of that mess was Mozilla.
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:2)
If it weren't for Microsoft, we'd be paying for a copy of Netscape 6.87 based on the Netscape 4.x codebase instead of running Firefox. Thank you, Bill Gates.
Has everyone forgotten Internet Explorer? Fuck you, Bill Gates, with your first to market bundled bullshit that has exposed every grandmother that tried to venture onto the internet to credit card fraud and zombification. Say what you like about Nutscrape, it at least didn't have its hooks deep in the OS.
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:2)
They weren't fast enough, smart enough, mean enough or have deep enough pockets to be real contenders in the market.
Or have Daddy's network of contacts to help them out, unlike William Gates III...
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:5, Insightful)
These companies didn't deserve anything. Companies come and go as markets change. Protecting these companies will only stifle innovation and competition.
For the record, I'm not a Microsoft supporter. I don't care for their software and I don't use any of it. However, I do not feel the need to bash them with bullshit economics like you apparently do. Stop that.
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft broke the law, whether you disagree with that law or not. The Bush administration, in its first weeks on the job, removed the experienced lawyers on the case and replaced them with young lawyers with no prior experience in monopoly litigation. The expert independant counsel was also mysteriously fired with no explanation. Bush sabotaged the anti-trust case by crippling the prosecution.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:2)
You might not agree with the law, but of course the prosecution would find a legal basis for their case. It wasn't just the local constable hauling them in for a breach of the peace, y'know?
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:2)
I'd explain in detail, but I'm already over my troll-feeding limit.
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:2)
Acutally, the final judgement of the courts was the MS hadn't broken the law by bundling IE with Windows. It was for other reasons that they ultimately got in trouble.
Total crap (Score:3, Insightful)
OS/2!!
All of this talk about how Microsoft killed the internet is typical OSS/Mac/Commie fanboi rhetoric that picks on companies they don't like (like Microsoft) while ignoring companies that are supportive of their particular agenda (strange how IBM used to be the evil empire, but they embraced Linux, so they're "cool" now
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:2)
I've always thought Netscape killed itself. They were making alot of money having the onl
Re:Microsoft killed the net 0.x companys (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell that to Mozilla, which made $72MM from Google [internetnews.com].
All right kids... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:All right kids... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All right kids... (Score:1)
Add the fact that many people don't know the difference and I start making jokes in poor taste about how frames are bad. In my defense, I've been in the process of de-framing some poor development recently...
Re:All right kids... (Score:2)
Re:All right kids... (Score:2)
Re:All right kids... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:All right kids... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:All right kids... (Score:2)
Link to the beta (Score:5, Informative)
The Netscape Name Is Now Worthless (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Netscape Name Is Now Worthless (Score:1)
Old (Score:1)
Why a young audience? (Score:3, Insightful)
math: 100% of $10 is less than 10% of $200
If they wanted to make a decent portal, they really should consider either making their audience choices a little larger or tergeting an audience with a better marketability. Sure kids will snap at ANY next best thing, but more mature consumers have the power to keep it going.
Re:Why a young audience? (Score:2, Insightful)
While it is not based on hard evidence or research;
$10 a week allowance
$200 a week wages
the one with wages (adult) may only have 10% of their wages to be expendable income
Therefore, a childs expendable income ($10) would generally be less than an adults expendable wages ($20).
Congrats you can do math and therefore grasp my point.
Re:Why a young audience? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Why a young audience? (Score:1)
Framing that issue (Score:3, Insightful)
What to do (Score:1)
Re:What to do (Score:2)
"Netscape is pretty much irrelevant as a brand name these days. They should shut it all down and turn netscape.com into a museum of the internet."
Yet the traffic to their domain is about 4x that of digg's traffic. Most people reading this post would like to get one thousanth of Netscape's traffic.
The Netscape brand may not be particularly hip among the /. crowd, but they're likely making scary amounts of money.
Re:What to do (Score:2)
And I would think that 90% of Netscape hits are from browser homepage settings or similar. So the netscape.com site is therefore irrelevant because the browser could just as easily be set to have a homepage of abc.com.
Netscape still exist? (Score:1)
How about (Score:1)
How about not. (Score:1)
Re:How about (Score:2)
Netscape is dead (Score:1)
Calacanis is a dope (Score:1)
Not A Chance (Score:5, Interesting)
It will gain *some* traction. They're going to throw enough money behind it to get people checking it out. And of those who do, a small percent might actually use it. But they're not doing it better than their competitors. It's not really innovative. It's just a "me too" (a phrase I'll forever associate with AOL and its users) site.
Calacanis being behind it probably gives it less cred with me than if they'd hired away Cmdr. Taco or one of the Digg or Fark founders to do it. Calacanis is a suit in sheep's clothing, and nothing good comes of suits.
- G
The link (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree about the frame. It's huge.
And the comments are about as high quality as Digg.
The first comment, in the first story (about hooters), is:
It's all about the Wii.
I think that sums it up.
Re:The link (Score:4, Insightful)
Just remove all images from the right side of the screen, kill the ads in the
middle of the frame, and finally remove the junk at the bottom of the page
(nobody's gonna look there anyways so might as well save bandwidth).
As it is, the site is too busy and it is hard to focus on the stories. Story
selection seems weird - it is just news. Nothing to provoke a serious
discussion. The commenting link is very small, as if the designers were
afraid someone might actually post a comment.
I also don't get their voting system. It'd be one thing for me to rate the
story on a scale, say from 1 to 10 and then post the average rating next to
the story. That way user input has some meaning. But what does it mean that
10 people voted for a story? Ten out of how many? How is that related to the
quality of the post?
Bottom line: it is not crazy for AOL to run a community discussion website -
forums were their core business for a while. But this website shows that that
they have surprisingly little clue about their core business.
ugh. (Score:5, Informative)
et tu, slashdot? ;)
I have the pleasure of working as the lead developer for the new netscape.com.
We've been in beta for approximately 31 hours. We haven't even taken over the domain yet (and won't for awhile). The response has been overwhelming. It's the most valuable feedback we could have ever asked for though (and frankly, we expected a lot of it...) The frame navigator and the pop up new windows for instance, are things that annoy folks to no end -- duh, right? Well internally, it's an odd 50/50 split -- they are both designed from the start to be user preferences, configurable for each person. We'll get there in time, right now we're focused on measuring reactions to features and design changes. I know the definition of "beta" has changed.. but.. uh... it's beta. ;)
Are we attempting to be a "digg killer?" Not at all. We're attempting to iterate on the concept of social news for a completely different demographic. We're trying to create an honest, fun, interesting portal. Did digg kill slashdot? It's faster and has more daily content, yet people come here for discussion -- Slashdot's strength. We may not be "there" yet, but again, this thing is a brand new project, about 4 months old, and has only been publically accessible for less than two days.
Thankfully, we all have pretty thick skin here. It's been enjoyable talking to folks and seeing what the concerns are. Hopefully we can evolve this thing into the great product we all have in mind. I do appreciate everyone who has taken the time to send us their thoughts by e-mail or blog post. We're actively reading them and responding as much as we can. Let us know what your concerns are, and we'll try to address them (where we can, that is.. we don't like tons of ads just like everyone else.. just the nature of our position right now)
Re:ugh. (Score:2)
If you strike me down Darth, I shall become more powerful that you can possibly imagine.
Re:ugh. (Score:1)
I am rotflol at the pathetic effort to secure the system
i'm just going to laugh for a while and then decide what i wanna do next
Re:ugh. (Score:4, Insightful)
I look at this latest development, following so many other baffling ones, and feel a dull ache. Once I was happy - even eager - to send bucks toward Jim, Marc and Jim. How depressing to think it would've been a mercy to retire the company name long before the conception of the beta's k3wl arcade labyrinth. It's like a mutated descendant of GEnie gone horribly wrong.
<grrr
Re:ugh. (Score:2, Informative)
The Big Picture emerges (Score:1, Offtopic)
So, it seems that it's them who are that unnamed business that's being exploited with a zero-day flaw [slashdot.org], and the attack is a form of identitty theft [slashdot.org]!
Now I'm beginning to get the big picture!
Confused Identity (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, the Netscape name brand is probably not a good choice for this. I've never understood why the Netscape website has always been stretched so far beyond its original use. Netscape was a browser, not a portal, and as much as you try to make it otherwise, Netscape.com still just a place to get an alternative browser (it's just harder to find the link nowdays).
Netcraft is dead (Score:2)
Or something.
Priorities. (Score:1)
Maybe it's just the fact that it's the end of the day on a Friday, but I can tell you that, between the two, I am way more interested in Jessica Alba's bikini than in the latest round of unrest in Iraq at the moment.
I really want to hate the new look... (Score:1)
Re:I really want to hate the new look... (Score:1)
Ahhh, excuse me?! (Score:1)
Netscape is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Netscape is irrelevant. (Score:2)
You almost got it right.
AOL knows there can be no success related to Netscape. What they do seem to be interested in is how many ways and to what completeness they can use Netscape as a loss leader for obviously dismal failures.
Everything AOL has done under the name Netscape has been a mind bogglingly stupid idea, or just a rather dumb idea with no marketing behind it so failure is assured.
I'm sure AOL does market research. They have to have a spreadsheet somewhere showing that Netscape brand recogniti
No. (Score:2)
I'll Marc Andreessen is rolling... (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously and ironically, Marc Andreessen IS an investor in Digg
I must be missing it (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.beta.netscape.com (Score:1, Informative)
It was not linked in the article
Um, netscape portal... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Netscape.com has never been any kind of geek destination as far as I'm aware of. I usually hate "how is this news for nerds" comments, but this time around...I dont' see the geek angle here.
Yes, it was the first dot-com IPO -debuting in 1995. And yes netscape was the major web browser for the mid and late 90's but...the portal hasn't been relevent for like 10 years.
So, tell me, who in
Off-topic my ass! (Score:2)
That's not offtopic, you crack-smoking monkeys; it's not even close!
Re:Um, netscape portal... (Score:3, Informative)
Netscape was a visionary company. If Microsoft hadn't squished them, they would single-handedly control the Internet today. You stil
Age? (Score:5, Funny)
Many Netscape users have become Firefox users (Score:2, Interesting)
In my own experience, two years ago I have been a Netscape user and in fact, remember version 1.0 with the "beating N" and even version 0.94 beta at work on a Sun Solaris machine. I made the switch to Firefox at the time and one item that got me to switch was the built-in pop-up blocker. A big item in my book especially with the in your face obnoxious marketing.
I remember a few years back when AOL bought out Netscape, in my opinion, t
Framing third-party sites is bad (n)etiquette (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought that went out with the 90s, at least as far as the reputable portals go. It's rare that I agree with any actions perpetrated by Fox News, but I see they have the sense to include a "frame-buster" script on their site (as I do on all of mine), so clicking on the Netscape link led to the site I was expecting to see, not Netscape's "hijacked" version.
Oh, and having linked sites pop up in new windows is annoying too.
Now that's news! (Score:2)
I for one see nothing wrong with Jessica Alba's bikini... And, really is there such a thing as too much of Jessica Alba in a bikini?
Re:Now that's news! (Score:1)
By definition, if Jessica Alba is in a bikini, then there's too much of Jessica Alba in a bikini.
Soo... (Score:2)
Jessica Alba's bikini isn't intellectual news? Damn, there goes my research grant.
Learning Nothing (Score:2)
So we baby boomers... (Score:2)
I must have missed the memo.
Re:So we baby boomers... (Score:2)
Re:So we baby boomers... (Score:2)
Censorship (Score:4, Interesting)
Netscape.net TOPS in email (Score:2)
There is nothing on Netscape anyone would want to see. And their latest makeover is so bad that I continue to use an older link bypassing the new interface.
A great social site must have great users (Score:2)