So, Nick Denton has created a bit of a stir publishing data that anyone who can type in “Alexa.com” or “Snapshot.compete.com” already knows — traffic for Netscape has waned since Netscape transformed from traditional on-line news property to Digg competitor.
All that is up in the air are the specifics, which Nick and J-Cal seem to be debating — is debatable in and of itself. After all, if Digg is the white whale that Netscape wants to catch, Netscape’s traffic is, if you want to be charitable, “stalled”, while Digg’s traffic is still climbing.
Now that Jason Calacanis has left, it provides a fresh opportunity for Netscape, particularly since his departure throws these numbers into sharp relief.
So what to do?
Well, let’s start with what the problem is.
Netscape is trying to be a better Digg than Digg already is — to a population of users that are probably not apt to adopt a new paradigm for news reading, gathering, and participating, than the population over at Digg (an agist assumption probaby, but data has shown Netscapers to be older than Diggers).
Nevermind the second part of that problem, history has shown time and time again the power of first mover advantage and how difficult it is for the runner up to overtake the first place lead. And in some cases, its nigh well impossible. Pepsi. Xbox. Linux. And so on.
I think that at this point the braintrust at AOL / Netscape have four options:
1) Blow up Netscape — again. Perhaps the ballsiest and riskiest of the three, particularly since I have no idea what Netscape should turn into. Total user generated citizen news? A news aggregator powered by social content? Who knows. But the idea is rather than chase Digg, create a new paradigm for social news that is game changing. Don’t be Sega. Be the Sony Playstation. The problems of with this of course, are many; it would require buy in at the highest levels, and a commitment to realize that it could be a total failure, but perhaps with the understanding that it would take many tries or iterations to get it right. Oh, there’s also the problem that further innovation would be even further alienating your existing users who are just getting used to a new way of reading and contributing to the news.
2) Incrementally improve Netscape – Muhammad at themulife was wondering about this, and I was wondering about it as well, but I’m not sure if this is really a winning strategy. After all, no matter how hard you try, you’ll never really “out-digg” Digg because it will never be able to shake its reputation as an also-ran — particularly with as media savvy a bunch as the people that Digg courts. Continually evolving its offering as a moderated Digg is a strategy that won’t dramatically win over users, so much as offer current users a reason to stay.
Rather than technical offerings, what will probably make the largest difference in the long run is either a concerted marketing or strategic effort to gather, educate, and convert some existing traffic into Netscape users. The best way would be to try and convert traffic across all of AOL’s existing properties; like situation 1), this would require buy in at the highest level, and commitment of valuable real estate across the board to get this to work. However, because it leverages existing traffic, it would probably cost the least amount of dollars and represent the lowest risk for the greatest return. The question, of course, is whether or not the new AOL/ Netscape brass has enough gumption to believe in the Digg/ Netscape model for news. Another issue, of course, is trying to convince a different population of users that a new model of news (socially driven content) is as useful as what many of them were previously used to — which might require a lot of time and education with debatable success.
3) Stick to the Status Quo — While traffic numbers have fallen off, from what I can see things look like they are stabilizing to a degree. While its not a winning strategy, it might be the most expeditious and risk-averse. Stick with what’s working to a limited degree. Try and monetize what you have. Its role might not necessarily be a long term one, but at least to survive a few more months.or years until someone comes up with a brilliant idea to dramatically turn things around (see scenes 1 and 2)
4) Go back to the old Netscape.com — there is a growing movement to petition Netscape to bring back the old Netscape.com. Sound outrageous? It might not. Consider that at its height, Netscape was still commanding over 170 million (million!) page views per week (some of whom might echo these kinds of comments). Compare data from any flawed service you want, and they all show that at its height Netscape.com was a towering giant over Digg — and still would be. Thinking strictly about the numbers, it might make sense to end the Digg/ J-Cal experiment and go back to what “worked”; make overtures to a crowd that has been lost, and try and regain the traffic that Netscape once held. Is it a long-term solution? I don’t know — its certainly a whole lot less trendy, that’s for sure, and as “news media” evolves it might be a losing proposition over that time frame. But for a company that is on the ropes and has just hired an old-world MSM CEO, it might look just attractive enough to try in the interim.
So there you are — some avenues for what Netscape.com could try in the upcoming days, months and years. I think Netscape is at a turning point though. Decisions made now will probably have lasting effects for a long time; brief discussions I’ve had with folks who work as Navigators make it seem like they are pursuing perhaps, a combination of the “status quo” and “incrementally improving” things. Maybe I’m wrong — but I don’t think that as it exists now, Netscape will ever have the juice to overtake Digg, never mind accumulate the users it once had before.
At the end of the day, perhaps Netscape needs to ask itself the following question — will the existing (and previous) demographics of Netscape’s users be such that they will never entirely embrace the social news format of Netscape.com in its current format? If so, is it be worth it to throw away such a giant pool of users in favour of a new one — just so that you can pursue this new model of news, now and in the future?
November 20th, 2006 at 11:16 pm | Permalink
“I think Netscape is at a turning point though. Decisions made now will probably have lasting effects for a long time; brief discussions I’ve had with folks who work as Navigators make it seem like they are pursuing perhaps, a combination of the “status quo” and “incrementally improving” things.”
That segment pretty accurately captures the essence of the behind-the-scenes efforts going on at Netscape.com right now.
November 20th, 2006 at 11:21 pm | Permalink
[...] Instead of reading the rag, if you would rather read an intellectual exploration of the various options that Netscape could avail at this point, please join Dr. Tony Hung. [...]
November 21st, 2006 at 5:05 am | Permalink
I may be slightly biased in my assessment (I work for AOL/Weblogs Inc), but to me it seems like Netscape is already aiming a lot higher than Digg. Digg is almost exclusively tech-related. You’ll get the ocassional topical news piece, but I’ve never seen anything akin to the huge, 1000 comment political discussions that are regularly on Netscape. The metajournalism goes way beyond Digg. The video uploads add valuable original content. The community is 50/50 male/female.
AOL already has the opportunity to beat Digg. All it’s a matter of is being able to harness the community. If Netscape can figure out a way of turning a 1000 political flame war into a meaningful debate then it’ll already have won. Frankly the sky’s the limit with the emerging field of meta-j.
November 21st, 2006 at 9:51 am | Permalink
Conrad — I guess to some people, political discussion is a few rungs BELOW a tech flamewar about apple, zune, linux or whatever. ;)
Seriously, though — comments, even in the 1000’s, in my humble opinion, are only evidence that you’re activating your current community, but has no bearing on your ability to attract new ones — which is Netscape’s biggest dilemma.
November 21st, 2006 at 11:18 am | Permalink
For the nth time: Netscape isn’t about beating Digg or out-digging Digg. Just as Digg has never been about out Deliciousing Delicious.
We’re about creating a new social news experience and making that experience the best experience that we can. Right now we have over 83,000 active members on the site and you can watch that number grow daily via our tracker; of course, that group of active participants is entirely dwarfed by our total readership. Valleywag’s chart of Netscape’s performance is seriously flawed. Traffic numbers were falling off before we made the change to the new format, we took an expected hit when we made the change, we stayed flat throughout the summer months, and now we’re on an up tick in readership.
November 21st, 2006 at 11:33 am | Permalink
Ck — I am glad to hear that things are on the upswing; furthermore, I’m glad your intentions are not to outDigg Digg. Unfortunately, intentions don’t necessarily affect perceptions of potential users.
I respect that Netscape is trying to create a great experience — from the ability to upload videos, on-the-set videos, to hiring moderators and the whole bit.
But, I guess the question is if you’re only seeing an uptick now, in spite of all of that activity, what else do you have in store to rapidly increase readership?
Surely the higher ups (and you) are not content with the status quo. And in spite of not wanting to outDigg Digg, surely there is some impetus to catch up to the leader as they’ve continually grown while, until recently, things have been flat.
Cheers
t
November 21st, 2006 at 11:50 am | Permalink
“But, I guess the question is if you’re only seeing an uptick now, in spite of all of that activity, what else do you have in store to rapidly increase readership?”
Lots. ;-)
However, there are two different sets of numbers that are getting confused here: readers and members. Digg is the clear leader in active members on their site, but they didn’t hit their critical mass until closer to the one year old mark (a mark we’re not even halfway to as of yet). So far our member uptake on the site is doing nicely. We’re not stagnating, we’re growing slowly and slowly aggregating more members as friends tell friends etc. This is what happens with social media. It grows slowly at first in active membership and then hits a few booms as everything begins to snowball nicely.
Readerwise, Netscape is still doing pretty damn well. Best of all a lot of our tags are starting to pop up on top search results in Google and other search engines. Right now we’re building good content. Eventually, Google will sniff out that content and our audience will find us.
For example, Roy, who came to us from Digg to be one of our Navigators sniffs out nearly every story having to do with Open Source Software (http://www.netscape.com/member/schestowitz/). He’s not getting many posts to the homepage, but that doesn’t matter and isn’t the point. The point is that all that good information, aggregated in one place under an easy to find tag, is going to eventually find its way via search to the people looking for that information and we’re going to pull that audience in.
We’re planting the seeds for our growth spurts with all the content that is growing on the site. Stay tuned. I have no doubt that we’ll continue to grow nicely.
November 21st, 2006 at 12:09 pm | Permalink
Well it sounds like you have a few pots on the stove, and you’re certainly right in one aspect.
Digg’s traffic AND readership leapt in distinct bursts — one does wonder if Netscape is one giant scoop away from such a leap in traffic.
Keep scooping away and who knows … Maybe the next major story about Paris Hilton will land on your doorsteps too. :)
Cheers
t
November 21st, 2006 at 1:37 pm | Permalink
Here are a couple of things that will save Netscape:
1. Stop banning or pissing off your top users.
2. Stop changing the front page ever other day.
3. Let users make a choice on what front page they want to see.
4. Let users subcribe to their friends and let their friends posts be their front page.
5. Stop promoting weblogs inc, and other sites that belong to the managements friends.
6. Bring back Jason :) (no not really)
7. Quit denying your are competing with digg!
8. Hell I already created the site that would work better then netscape does once. Use RSS feeds to feed the news in to different channels so you won’t have users whining (like I did) that their stories did not make the front page. Hell you could get rid of all the navigators if you did it this way. LEt peopel submit their blog feeds instead of each individual story.
November 21st, 2006 at 1:42 pm | Permalink
Shane just reminded me: One of the things we’re doing to make things better is to ban members who fly off the handle with abusive comments, ban members who spam the site with links from their own sites and spam our other members with requests to vote for their stories, and ban sites that are reported multiple times by our members as spam. We want to try to build a community that is as troll-free as possible on the Internet.
November 21st, 2006 at 1:58 pm | Permalink
Glad I could help C.K. You also reminded me that being part of a social community clearly takes maturity, which of course it seems you are clearly lacking in.
You don’t seem to be able to take constructive criticism very well. Maybe you should spend a little more time listening to your readers and less time messing with me. Oh by the your crew trying to get me banned from google adsense, um it did not work. Thanks for trying though!
The new management is coming in, will you still be there! I doubt it, and if you are still there, it just shows what kind of company AOL is.
November 21st, 2006 at 4:07 pm | Permalink
> The new management is coming in, will you still be there!
> I doubt it
I believe C.K. *is* the new management. :-)
November 21st, 2006 at 4:14 pm | Permalink
When I speak of management I am talking about the CEO of AOL. My new dog Jack could do a better job then C.K. is doing on Netscape. With C.K. making immature comments like the one above I can bet you money he will be “dooced” in a years time. Hey Chris you seem to want to defend C.K. and Jason a lot. I don’t know you and probably never will, is it hard to kiss ass that much, or did it come naturally! :) Corporate shills really bother me, they tend to just tow the company line with out ever having any real thought whatsoever!
November 21st, 2006 at 4:51 pm | Permalink
I am writing to suggest that Netscape concentrate on doing the basics well.
My husband and I chose Netscape as our preferred Internet portal some years ago. The look of the home page for accessing news stories was less important to us than the excellent e-mail formatting and easy-to-use and organize Bookmarks.
I was very disappointed that versions after 7.1 did not have the same e-mail access. (In 7.1, you could select mail and set it to take you to wherever. In later versions, you needed an address with Netscape.) That’s why I’ve kept 7.1.
Although I don’t particularly like the new interactive format, I don’t care enough to go somewhere else. Just, as I commented previously, do the basics well.
Kay
November 21st, 2006 at 5:13 pm | Permalink
Ok, Shane … be cool — let’s take it down a notch.
Don’t make me prepare a comments policy ;)
November 21st, 2006 at 9:14 pm | Permalink
Ok Tony my spat with Netscape is off your blog. Where will it end up next “Stay tuned for the next episode of as Netscape turns”
November 21st, 2006 at 9:15 pm | Permalink
Sure … let us know how it turns out ;)
November 22nd, 2006 at 1:55 pm | Permalink
[...] For those who don’t like to roll up their pants and wade into the comments section of my blog, CK stopped by yesterday to offer a few hints as to what they’re doing to boost Netscape’s membership / traffic: ME: “But, I guess the question is if you’re only seeing an uptick now, in spite of all of that activity, what else do you have in store to rapidly increase readership?” [...]
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:22 am | Permalink
[...] they were heading over … about 5 years. What’s that, I’m referring to? Netscape, [...]