Deep Jive Interests

Allen Stern at CenterNetworks queries how good Propeller (previously “Netscape.com”) is and will be, and crunches some publicly available traffic data to suggest, perhaps, in time it will be a legitimate #2 to Digg as the social news king.

I have to admit that I don’t follow Digg and its clones other social news brethren all that closely; neither do I know if Propeller has anything in particular “cooking”, as it were behind the scenes.

However, what I think _is_ clear to me is that Propeller needs to continue growing.  Depending on the graph you look at, they’re either plateauing or growing; I’d like to think that they’re doing a little of the latter.

However, they need to continue doing this in spades if they are going to play “second fiddle” to *anyone* (keeping in mind that Propeller is probably trying to be the best Propeller it can be ;) — and that means, not just resting on the strength of its community, or the strength of its anchors, or propeller-heads, or what have you.

Its clear that to grow, they’ll need to pull out some strategic and tactical marketing maneuvers to continue to win over new and older fans of social news, whether it means contests, free swag, off-line advertising, or joint ventures with AOL’s partners  or cross-marketing across the variety of AOL properties.

I mean, in some ways, Propeller is excellently positioned for the latter of those two options given how deep AOL’s roots *do* go.

I suppose the question is if in 2008 we’ll continue to think of Propeller as a “formerly of Netscape” and “that place where people are paid to moderate”, or if it will, in the immortal words of Paula Abdul, take that piece and “really make it your own!”