Much has been said about the new Netscape.com site. From its Beta release to launch, everyone who has visited Digg.com (or at least know what it is) has called Netscape.com a blatant rip-off. If you’re a digg.com fanboy, you probably think Kevin Rose and friends invented voting, much like Al Gore invented the Internet. Regardless, digg.com has risen meteorically over the past year in number of unique visitors and page views.
Since Digg’s latest 3.0 release, which added a number of new buckets like World & Business, Entertainment and Games to the site, and today’s news of an upcoming Sports bucket, the site is poised to take aim at a mass audience. However, as the complaints from Netscape.com come in, I started wondering, is this something a mass audience wants?
The Internet, as a democratic medium, is foreign to most people. I’ll say that the majority of Internet users could care less about democratic news or media. They want to trust their media and they’ll do that by getting their news from sources they feel are trust-worthy — like New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post or their local rag.
So could digg.com’s rapid success be attributable to its tech-savvy following? And will the general masses follow the lead and make digg.com a daily destination?
I don’t think we’ll get the answers to these questions from digg.com. I think we’ll get them from Netscape.com. And it appears we are beginning to see what some people think about this “democratic” medium. For instance, there was a story reported by the New York Times that said long-time Netscapers did not like the new Netscape.com site. They even started a petition to get the old site reinstated.
That article prompted a response from Netscape.com’s main man, Jason Calacanis. He says that the number of users that have complained are a very small percentage of Netscape users.
Netscape has a very interesting dilemma on their hands. You see, digg.com was created specifically by and for people that wanted “democratic” media. Netscape.com is thrusting “democratic” media onto their users. The results will be interesting, but we’ll see if Netscape’s latest attention is a result of hype or honest demand.
