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Netscape.com Loses Its Identity
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?"
As far as I can tell, AOL has never been entirely sure what to do with the Netscape brand name.
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?)
Netscape readers will change from the baby-boomers of yester-year to a younger audience more interested in Jessica Alba's Bikini than real intellectual news.
I thought this sort of vapid interest was not delimited to certain generations.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Netscape used to be the domanant web browser... back when we were using Windows 3.1, you needed a third-party DLL called Trumpet Winsock to implement TCP/IP, and RealAudio was the dominant streaming program.
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, 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...
Here's the deal. Frames are baaaad. Mmmmmmkaaaay?
(end of post)
I think netscape could use some fresh material! There is more to life than being intelectual. xoxoxo B.S.
http://www.beta.netscape.com/
The name "Netscape" now carries no special weight. AOL would be better off trying to leverage their existing proprietary features (AIM, user logins and stored information, etc.) to integrate some new features into the services they provide and bring them to new consumer markets.
Netscape is old & tired, it needs to be considering startups instead of trying to re-invent itself.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I don't understand why they would want to target an audience that they already have captured for the most part with AIM. A young audience's expendable income may have a larger percentage of expendability, but it's not like they make a lot of money.
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.
I don't think I'd call what Netscape has been "real intellectual news".
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.
If I had created the world I wouldn't have messed about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers
I ahve heard hide nor hair about NS for some time now.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
a new Slashdot Beta called Diggdot.org
EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
There is no sense in carrying netscape anymore. It's old and decrepit. AOL should let it die.
It is the owner that crashes the system. If you are enough of an idiot to put 50 background processes in Windows you sho
haha that's funny that Jason is heading this project up, now it makes perfect sense. That guy is a complete moron.
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
Start a happiness pandemic
Slashdot is much more superiour than digg. We shouldn't lower articles to their level. They're not even good at describing things.
It is the owner that crashes the system. If you are enough of an idiot to put 50 background processes in Windows you sho
FYI - the 'new' site is http://www.beta.netscape.com/
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
thats the reason AOL bought Netscape to get the people who were going to netscape.com AND those that were downloading and installing Netscape, so they could put those AOL links in there also. I remember years back some article on the web that AOL was getting info on what sites people browsed from Netscape 6. It was like spyware bundled inside the browser.
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)
So, it seems that it's them who are that unnamed business that's being exploited with a zero-day flaw, and the attack is a form of identitty theft!
Now I'm beginning to get the big picture!
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).
The real kicker is that the portal doesn't work with the Netscape 7.02 browser.
put this in your page
<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
if(window.s
window.top.location=self.locatio
//]]>
</script>
Netscape confirms it.
Or something.
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.
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.
...but I admit I don't much mind seeing Jessica Alba in a Bikini.
What is a "netscape"?! And what has it got to do with the intarnet?
Thats what it used to look like 5-7 years ago.
The success or failure of the Netscape brand no longer matters to AOL. They know they'll never see Netscape bring back the billions of dollars AOL spent on it - not that making money was ever the point of buying Netscape anyway. AOL now uses Netscape to play with differnt or new ideas without watering down the AOL brand. In a year Netscape.com will be something else, and the lessons learned from giving users control over content at Netscape.com will be applied to hundreds, if not thousands of other projects in the AOL/TW universe.
Next question?
Cue The Sun...
in his gra....... err ...... cancel that...
Seriously and ironically, Marc Andreessen IS an investor in Digg
And I had thought that digg's comment posing was mindless enough, now we have AOL (the internet with training wheels) trying to be with it and think they can just come along and do a news site. I mean, i'll give them that it's a decent beta at this point but hardcore slashdot type people usually dont want to touch AOL with a ten foot pole. So good luck on having any intellegent discussion by people who actually have a degree in a cs/engineering/science related field (and no, devry university doesn't count).
I'll make the prediction right here and right now that this website will be the myspace of internet news.
Everytime this thread pops up, I go to netscape.com and I guess I'm just missing it - I don't see anything that reminds me of digg. It still looks like Netscape to me. Way too much coverage for what it's worth. There has to be more interesting news than this (since it's been covered twice tod on slashdot).
www.wildpad.com
...I think the last time I tried to take it seriously was in ...97? when I first got on the web?
/.land really cares? or is this Yet Another Slashvertisement?
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
"to a younger audience more interested in Jessica Alba's Bikini or Britney Spears" who the fsck isnt interested in that? at any age?
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
Netscape has never really been something that could compete with anything!! They owned the Internet at one time, and the first challange that came along, put them in the grave. How do they think that using the name Netscape is going to make some once great browser into the next great news site?
Slashdot has me, all day, everyday, they for sure can not compete with this place...I personally have tried Digg a couple of times, and think it sux!
----- I have bad karma for a reason! -----
In my opinion, many of the Netscape users have converted to Firefox.
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, that was the start of Netscape going downhill especially all the extra crap such as inserting their crap into your bookmarks with useless links. Even if you remove it, it was placed back in there the next time you run it.
I plan on staying with Firefox for now. I am looking at the new "SeaMonkey".
http://www.beta.netscape.com/
It was not linked in the article
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.
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?
IANAL... But I play one on
the topic of the discussion is the slashdot article on the netscape portal. In my post I was asking why we should care about the portal.
That's not offtopic, you crack-smoking monkeys; it's not even close!
Jessica Alba's bikini isn't intellectual news? Damn, there goes my research grant.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Who still goes to Netscape.com? Is it the AOL readers? How are they being directed there anyways.
IMO this new http://www.beta.netscape.com/ site is complete garbage, nothing halfway intelligent there - its no better than Myspace.
Although I do like Jessica Alba!
Good opinion piece, those pics of toe nail fungus medice had me laughing...who the hell did Netscape hire for their ad sales LOL fire that bozo!!
Jason Calacanis was one of the worst dot-com pimps to crawl from Silicon Alley during the Bubble. Anyone spending money on what he says deserves to lose it all.
--
make install -not war
...shouldn't be interested in Jessica Alba's bikini?
I must have missed the memo.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
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).
My first experience with the internet at home was on OS/2 Warp 3.0, which came with the wonderfully easy to set up Internet Access Kit. This included the Web Explorer browser, a TCP/IP stack and dialer, and (OMG how evil of them to bundle this a la MSN!) the IBM Global Connection client and a signup wizard for IBM's own ISP.
And OS/2 Warp 3.0 also came with a full suite of multimedia applications quite a bit more sophisticated than MPLAYER.EXE and SNDREC.EXE. How dare they bundle that in the O/S? They should make people download RealAudio Player and use that!
Here's the simple facts: Any O/S worth its salt was going to have to include a TCP/IP stack as the internet became popular. Same thing with a web browser. After all, what on earth do you do once you're connected to the internet? At the very least you need an FTP client to fetch other software, but a web browser makes that much easier. Heck, IBM Web Explorer was atrocious! I typically used it to download Netscape or IE for Windows 3.1 and used that instead and never touched WebEx again! Same thing when Windows 95 started to include IE. IE 2.0 was utterly unusable. And 3.0 wasn't much better. But it was a way to easily go to www.netscape.com to download the latest version of Netscape.
What really did Netscape in was that IE 4.0 was actually quite usable and feature-rich. Microsoft simply delivered a better product. Netscape decided to offer a bloated suite with their 4.0 release. Remember Communicator? With IE you had a browser and you had the option to use MS's lame Internet Mail and News, or you could get something decent like Eudora or Pegasus Mail. But with Netscape Communicator, you had this massive, crash-prone application that threw everything but the kitchen sink. And it took an eternity to download because it was so large. Eventually, they started offering a 4.x version of Navigator, but not at first, and it often lagged behind the Communicator version, so you were stuck with bugs and incompatibilities that were fixed in the newer versions.
So get this straight... Netscape killed Netscape, not Microsoft. Microsoft simply offered a better product. With the advent of IE 4.0, there was no longer any reason to download Netscape because Netscape was the inferior product by that time. This is totally fair. It's called competition. So what if Microsoft bundled it with the O/S? As I said, you need something to be able to, at the very least, go get something better. Why would Microsoft settle for having such a cruddy and almost unusable browser as IE 2.0 was? Of course they improved it and made it fully functional. (I think the KDE developers realized this, too. In the internet age, you need a web browser in your desktop. Hence Konqueror. And while the first versions of Konqueror weren't quite up to the task of using it as your default browser, they too saw a need to improve it and today it is quite adequate as one's default WWW browser.) You all bash MS constantly for making bug-ridden crapware, but then when they actually make great improvements to IE, you then bash them because it's finally better than your beloved Netscape and pretty much puts Netscape out of business? Gee, shame on Microsoft for developing and improving their software. And this wasn't even just on Windows. I ran Mac OS 8 for a long time, and Netscape would be guaranteed to crash my computer- it was just a matter of time until it happened. If I ever had to use someone else's Mac and all I saw wa
There is no need to have such a pretentious attitude towards netspace. Find something interesting to write about.
Serenity now!
Good article Netscape. Dating Dos never occured to me.
I don't know Digg's policy on pulling stories, but I'm pretty sure Time Warner's is a little more strict. Will net neutrality articles get pulled (RoadRunner, Netscape dialup)? How about anti-DRM ones (warner pictures/music/cable, CNN/TBS/TNT/Adult Swim)? I really doubt they'll allow lots of stories that challenge the party line.
I'll probably get modded offtopic, but do people really understand the tagging feature? I don't think "no" is a valid tag for this article, since it tells me nothing about the content. "netscape" I think is a perfect fit; if you wanted to find articles about "netscape", this would pop up, and I expect that. But articles about "no"? I don't see that happening.
xkcdsw: the unofficial archive of Making xkcd Slightly Worse
Must have been 7 or 8 years, since the last time I visited the Netscape homepage. It was my start page for 2 or 3 years, but I lost interest even before the AOL merger, because it was so "portal".
I've tried them all. Netscape wins my QoS award for reliability. Yahoo.com is the big loser for "spam" reasons. Gmail.com has privacy problems but ranked 1st in low net latency.
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.
From Wired:
...
The new Netscape.com will have links to news stories grouped under broad categories such as movies, health and fitness.
Wow. Really?
Seems pretty ambitious to "reinvent" the idea of links and the idea of news stories and the idea of broad categories all in one business model. I think they'll end up having to split the property so that separate entities can focus on each one of these innovations.
In a follow up interview, Calacanis boldly stated, "this could revolutionize yawning, as we know it".
Streaming video of new point-and-click "mouse" device at 11
That's what makes slashdot what it is. The site itself maybe flawed in one way or another, or may not be, but that doesn't matter; what sets it apart are its users and their comments. Whenever I see a story on the web that amuses me I'm always thinking "I can't wait till this hits slashdot"; a recent example, the story that humans and monkeys had sex for a million years, I can't tell you how much anticipation I had when I saw the story on Google News for it to arrive on slashdot to read the hilarious comments I've come to associate with slashdotters.
I actually was thinking the same thing...
It is the owner that crashes the system. If you are enough of an idiot to put 50 background processes in Windows you sho
The dude's just a dot-com huckster. He's good at hype, but has he ever delivered anything?
I worked with him in the late 90s, and I can say with authority that my dog has better and more reasonable tech ideas.