In a quickly shifting series of personnel moves, (read: a bloodbath of firings), Jason Calacanis, it seems like, has quit AOL – perhaps in protest of one of his closest mentors getting the axe (which, it seems, was quite dull — and required a few hacks).
Which means, he’s left Netscape — one of the oldest web properties on the net, transforming it from aging news behemoth, into new age social bookmarking bonanza. Some say it’ll never be as good as Digg, since it is poaching top Diggers, and uses a heavy ediorial hand; others claim its more like the “big leagues”, since its “navigators” actually get paid. In fact, this news rumour news falls on the relatively new news that whole batch of navigators recently got hired.
My “inside sources” (since I”m not a navigator myself), claim that he’s not answering any calls from the internal list host and publicly he’s not denying it. So what are we left with? The probable leaving of Mr. Calacanis from the ship he has piloted from the beginning.
While the wild speculation can begin about who is going to be taking the helm of Netscape (will it be an existing Navigator?!), if Netscape continues in the form its in, you can bet it has lost a personality that keeps Netscape in the news, and people interested in the company.
The alternative, of course, is that AOL, Netscape’s parent company, shutters Netscape as it is — since it doesn’t have the same evangelists within the company. No more paid navigators, no more social bookmarking, no more “mature” rival to Digg and Reddit. After all, since its on an advertising model, a short term executive might look at the 4 month old experiment and say “yikes, the traffic has actually continued to drop!”
Keep your eyes peeled and ears to the ground folks, — methinks that these “personnel” changes bode ill for many other people at AOL … and might we see Netscape heading right to the shoals shortly after J-cal leaves it rudderless?
November 16th, 2006 at 6:17 pm | Permalink
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November 16th, 2006 at 7:03 pm | Permalink
Miller too progressive?
Did the BlogSmith deal scare AOL too much?
Was JC too aggressive on his blog and has AOL been hoping they would get rid of him as well when firing Miller?
Many times when reading JC I have been thinking that he went to far, too far for a corporate environment such as AOL.
Many questions. The only thing we know today is that AOL goes back to the old style, with the new and conservative boss.
Anyway I predict some interesting days to come. JC and Cuban will surely be in touch in the next days.
Do you think Six Apart would contact Jason?
Surely several autors will follow JC, do you reckon they would be interesting for Y! ?
And if JC were to start a new network, which platform would he use? Wordpress? If he choses WP he won’t have to save on 2-ply toilet paper. :-D
November 16th, 2006 at 10:24 pm | Permalink
I get the impression Time Warner might be totally cutting loose from AOL and Netscape. So going rudderless is probably just giving them more reason to say good bye. Calacanis will go on to something better.
November 17th, 2006 at 10:53 am | Permalink
[...] That said, it was essentially a copycat approach, and my sense is that it hasn’t really been going all that well traffic-wise. Muhammad Saleem, a top Digger and Netscape poster, has some thoughts, and so does my friend Tony Hung. Nick Denton, who only recently seized the helm at the listing Valleywag, tastefully posts his thoughts about his old blogging nemesis under the category “obituary.” Nice. [...]
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:13 pm | Permalink
[...] who created a social news site that does not even work and is short of a breakdown all the time and then abandoned it. Do you think such a looser can tell you anything about SEO? Bullshit! If you love the stink of [...]
October 13th, 2007 at 11:01 pm | Permalink
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