Joe Hayes {dot} Org » Internet Marketing

Netscape’s Place In Social Media

Joe — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:31:18 +0000

For those not familiar with Netscape, the company garnered it’s popularity back in the mid 90’s with it’s web browser (Netscape Navigator), at the time the most commonly used version for web surfing. Navigator lost much of it’s market share after the first browser war with Microsoft, and Netscape was eventually purchased by AOL and have devoted themselves to improving the browser.

Fast foward to recent times, where in an effort to grab ahold of the open source, “web 2.0” crowd the Netscape crew decided to delve into the Social Networking scene with a Digg type clone. While many Netscape users were familair and happy with their current news portal (pretty much a rip of the AOL homepage), eventually it caught on and appeared to be growing in popularity as of late – showing a slight increase in traffic according to Alexa, the first time since late 2004 when it went on what seemed to be a never-ending plunge in traffic rankings.

So why am I writing this? We’ll, the social networking news site is going bye-bye, in their own words:

We received some feedback that people really do associate the Netscape brand with providing mainstream news that is editorially controlled. In fact, we specifically heard that our users do have a desire for a social news experience, but simply didn’t expect to find it on Netscape.com.

Which makes perfect sense. Netscape’s gain in popularity by using their branding to grow a social media site is actually hurting their browser’s branding (which is what made them popular to begin with). So what happens to their growing userbase? Welcome to Propeller. Don’t bother following the link for a few weeks from this post, as the site’s not likely up (as of today).

Good move or bad? Time will tell, obviously there’s a desire to have another social networking site like Digg, though aimed at all markets. Shoutwire was a failure – likely due to the childish moderating, over monetization including annoying pop-ups, and pornography advertisements (among other things). Other social media sites just don’t have what it takes (although many are still insanely popular – this niche is screaming for a leader), like Reddit – great site but’s stuck in 1985, SumbleUpon – another great concept but lacking in community, and a host of others but mostly geared towards the technology market (remember Slashdot? Well, it’s still alive).

I sincerely hope that Netscape does well with the launch of Propeller. They’ll likely port the large userbase over from Netscape and (hopefully) most of the community will follow it over there. They’ve only got one shot. I’d like to see at least a portion of the new Netscape news portal dedicated to showing the latest headlines from Propeller, that’s an important way to maintain value for those users contributing and alsohelping to develope an ”authority” for the new site. As a webmaster myself, I’ve been using Netscape for a while to find new interesting content to talk about and recenty became very active in their community. See my profile.

Only time will tell if Netscape is successful, if they’re not I hope another site steps up. The web does, in fact, need a great social media site that caters to the average internet user.

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Social Bookmarking List

Joe — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 19:10:19 +0000

Social Bookmarking is the craze right now. For web surfers they provide a convenient way to find intresting websites and valuable information that might have otherwise gone undiscovered. For webmasters, social bookmarking websites offer a huge potential for insane traffic and are a great viral marketing strategy. Below is a list I made for myself, feel free to use it.

Bookmark/Post Whatever Sites

http://reddit.com

http://del.icio.us

http://de.lirio.us

http://www.scuttle.org

http://www.spurl.net

http://www.simpy.com

http://www.maple.nu

http://givealink.org

http://www.jots.com

http://www.zurpy.com

http://feedmelinks.com

http://www.fazed.org

Take Some Consideration Before Posting (Categories Are Involved)

http://digg.com

http://www.propeller.com

http://www.shadows.com

http://www.blinklist.com

http://www.viralcow.com

http://www.commontimes.org

http://www.shoutwire.com

http://www.fark.com

http://www.web-feeds.com

http://www.bibilog.co

http://www.hypersuper.com

http://aworldofhelp.com

http://www.monkeyfilter.com

http://www.linkswarm.com

Must Be Approved By Editor Before Posted

http://www.i-am-bored.com

http://boingboing.net

Suggest As You Surf Sites:

http://www.stumbleupon.com

http://www.furl.net

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AOL Accidentally Releases Data From 20 Million Searches

Joe — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:42:05 +0000

AOL rrecently eleased search data gathered from 650,000 of their customers, causing an uproar about privacy concerns and dazzling webmasters. The 20 million search queries, listed with an anonymous number correlating to which user made the search, if and what result they clicked on, and what rank that result was on the page, were made available yesterday and then taken down a few hours later. Too late though, as dozens of mirrors have popped up hosting downloads of this huge 500ish MB file.

This gives search engine marketers (SEM’s) information they can use for pay per click (PPC) marketing, as well as hackers something to salivate over also. Hackers? Yea, apparently with some clever use of the data folks have been able to uncover sensitive personal information – since people often search for their own names, their own credit card and social security numbers, and any number of personal and embarrassing things, all connected by their “anonymous” user number.

Big brother is happy as well, I’m sure, since the Federal government was unsuccessfull getting search queries out of Google (which by the way, AOL search is powered by Google).

Oftentimes the search results are much more unsettling than just the potential for identity theft, including someone who repeatedly searched about ways to kill his wife, amongst other things. Many questions are raised about privacy and whether or not someone who searches for “how to kill your wife” should be tracked by the police.

In my opinion, this is another nail in the coffin for AOL. Ever since dial-up went the way of the dinosoars, they’ve been struggling to maintain their market share. Shaking up consumer confidence like this is not likely help much either.

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