Netscape Community Still Kicking

Posted on August 10, 2007

TechCrunch blogged yesterday that AOL might kill the Digg-like community built on Netscape.com and redirect traffic to this Netscape portal site on AOL.com instead. However, AOL quickly refuted this as a possibility. Netscape blogs they are alive and kicking and plan to continue the community.

Gloomy news indeed--if any of it were substantiated. As the head of the non-freaked-out editorial department, let me say a few things. AOL did just launch a Netscape-branded portal, designed to accommodate those members who don't wish to participate in a social news site. (Those members also have the option of using a personalized portal over at My.Netscape, not to mention the regular AOL portal itself.) No doubt some members will jump ship. But since the social news version of Netscape launched more than a year ago, most of the people with a yen for an old-fashioned portal have already left. Certainly the 323,589 individuals (as of this moment) who have joined the community didn't do so simply to check the weather and headlines.
Our director, Tom Drapeau, already responded to Arrington's post on TechCrunch itself. So did Marcien Jenckes, identified by TC as an "AOL spokesman" but actually a senior vice president in charge of some of the company's premiere properties, including AIM and Userplane.
"I want to echo Tom's post," noted Jenckes. "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."

Netscape doesn't appear to be listed on the AOL.com site map or promoted on the AOL.com website. They may be keeping the brand seperate. The blog post from Netscape should settle any confusion as to whether Netscape will continue its social news community. AOL's fairly recent transition from fee-based service to a ad-based model should mean AOL needs the kind of traffic a social media website can provide.