Sphinn - AOL Trashing Netscape?

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AOL Trashing Netscape?

Went Hot: August 9, 2007 - 11:03 pm
Posted By: lorenbaker 694 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.searchenginejournal.com)
Category: News Sites

Say goodbye to a good idea and a better link building machine! Rumors are floating around that AOL is closing Netscape.

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from dannysullivan 694 days ago #

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You see the updates on TechCrunch?

There's now a cobranded "portal" that they are promoting on Netscape with a box that says

We Hear You

Miss the old Netscape.com?

There's a new companion

experience at your fingertips

That jumps here:

http://netscape.aol.com/

Which is a traditional portal style.

http://tech.netscape.com/story/2007/08/09/aolcom-for-the-netscape-community/

has some discussion at Netscape itself and

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/09/aol-may-kill-their-netscape-digg-clone/#comment-1546918

is a comment from the person who runs the social Netscape site saying it will continue running.

Have to say -- they'd be silly to kill the community. But I can see them shifting it from netscape.com to something like community.netscape.com.

from lorenbaker 694 days ago #

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Nope, the Techcrunch updates were posted after writing my opinion in the rumor.

'Community has been a core element of both AOL and Netscape since their inception and will continue to be. As the text on the site explains, we wanted to give a more traditional portal alternative to the Netscape users who requested it. You can rest assured that social news will continue to be an important part of what we do.'

Thanks goodness they're not going to kill the social news sharing at Netscape, but given the moves to rerebrand the old Netscape portal at netscape.aol.com, I also agree that social news may have to step a bit to the site for the demand of a portal page.

Perhaps the My.Netscape.com option will give users the option of choosing or merging these 'competing' Netscape properties, in the fashion that modules can be added to Google personalized pages or MyYahoo.

from TimDineen 694 days ago #

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Great observations from Loren and in the update by Danny.

I'd hate to see Netscape change back to its former (dormant) state. It was just a portal that provided nothing unique and by the time Calacanis came along I bet the only reason that site still got traffic was by default or because of Netscape email logins. At least he tried to make it something unique and visit-worthy. I'm glad to hear it will continue "as is".

And, some bias here: those people who prefer the former state of Netscape.com aren't likely to be folks who would affect AOL business growth anyway.