wow. it took me a while to calm down before i could start writing anything. i got a chance to look at the new site design (not live, only internal) for propeller, and i have to say, it [expletive] rocks! the design will not only be much much better than the current site design, but it is safe to say that it will be better than all other social sites out there right now.

Technorati Tags: propeller, site, design, social media

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i’m happy to announce that i was just inducted into the digg.com 900 club. i am currently the only person in the group but zaibatsu will be joining me shortly. i want to thank all the content producers whose stories i have submitted (for creating the great content) and all the digg users (who have been reading and digging my submissions).

check out my profile, and the complete rankings.

i wanted to quickly mentioned that i just stumbled my 5,000th page (1,100+ photos) on stumbleupon.

along the way i’ve made some fantastic friends and have discovered hundreds of great blogs. stumbleupon is a truly great resource - one that i’ve only recently started to appreciate fully. here’s to 5,000 more!

check out my profile.

i’m happy to announce that i was just inducted into the digg.com 800 club. the group has a total of 4 members (including me). i want to thank all the content producers whose stories i have submitted (for creating the great content) and all the digg users (who have been reading and digging my submissions).

check out my profile, and the complete rankings.

in the wake of recent unfounded rumors about aol shutting down the new netscape (and the official response), allen stern has an interview with tom drapeau, director of netscape (read: elite ninja). here are some interesting bits:

so what is netscape?

Netscape means different things to different people, as it has had a long and storied history. Today’s Netscape is focused on helping people find the things they are looking for, which is a shared concept with the social news site, start page, and browser.

what’s the team at netscape like?

The Netscape team is a pleasure to work with. The talent, dedication, and energy they bring to the product is refreshing. We have writers, reporters, engineers, and designers on staff, all of whom work remotely (we have staff in New York and Orlando, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and all parts in between). The ideas that come out of this group are truly amazing, and their execution is tremendous. The team brings great joy to building fun products, which makes my job pretty simple.

is netscape a digg clone?

I have a lot of good things to say about Digg. However, Netscape has a very different community of folks contributing to the site, and the Netscape model differs from Digg in our editorial approach. I would say that Digg inspired aspects of Netscape.com, but I would say that it isn’t fair to label Netscape a clone. I feel that as long as Netscape maintains a growing, thriving community, and adds to social news, it has fulfilled its purpose and should be allowed to stand on its own.

head over to allen’s site for the complete (and quite insightful) interview.

disclaimer: i’m a netscape scout

after yesterday’s rumors (started by unknown people and spread by arrington & co.), netscape has published an official response. here’s the gist of it:

Yesterday afternoon, a TechCrunch blogger insisted that he had just heard Netscape’s death rattle. According to Michael Arrington, AOL was on the verge of killing off this very site. But despite the rumors, we’re very much alive and kicking.

furthermore, the post says:

Here at Netscape, we prefer to dwell on the good news. With millions of unique visitors per month, the site is the focus of a growing, enthusiastic community. We have major design initiatives on the schedule for the next year, and will continue to respond to feedback from our large, energetic, sometimes rambunctious membership. We’re still here. Should that change, our community will be the first to know.

disclaimer: i’m a netscape scout

it appears that now that techcrunch has become the de facto source for inside information about web 2.0 companies, products, and services, michael arrington’s site is now expanding into the realm of rumormongering to better compete with the silicon valley gossip rag - valleywag.

the recent post, titled ‘AOL May Kill Their Netscape Digg Clone‘ is full of speculation (based on misinformation) that is presented as fact.

AOL is considering killing off the “Digg Clone” social news site that they launched a little over a year ago at Netscape.com, and redirecting traffic to the Netscape portal instead. One source says it’s a done deal. Another says no final decisions have been made. But the Netscape editorial team is rumored to be completely freaked out, and they are starting to talk to outsiders.

i have been a part of the ‘netscape editorial team’ for a year now and am in constant touch with a majority of the other members of team netscape and haven’t heard a peep of this ‘completely freaked out’ and talking to outsiders business that arrington is talking about.

Just launched this week, there is a new AOL.com site available for the Netscape Community. Over the past year, there has been a lot of feedback regarding some of the features of the previous Netscape.com site that have gone away, and this site hopes to bring some of that functionality back. Check it out!

any objective look at the official information would conclude that rather than shutting netscape doing and redirecting traffic to the new aol subdomain (as the article on techcrunch interprets things) this is more of an effort to please the two different kinds of communities netscape has engendered, the social users and the portal users. after all, the other site is being referred to as ‘a new companion experience’.

here are a few choice quotes:

Tom Drapeau (Director of Netscape)

Umm…. who are all of these sources? I run the Netscape.com social news site now, and I wrote the text that you quoted in your article. The cobrand launch this week was simply an effort to give a place to go for those who desire a Netscape portal experience instead of a social news experience.

The Netscape.com social news team is alive and well, despite your “rumors”, and have extensive plans for 2007 and 2008 which are already in progress. We may exist in a different AOL division than the AOL.com team, but that doesn’t make this a turf war. I am speaking to the editorial team right now, and as they knew this portal was launching weeks in advance… they aren’t “completely freaked out”. Where are you getting these sources/rumors?

If you are curious to know about Netscape.com, e-mail me at tom at newnetscape dot com.

Tom

Marcien Jenckes (SVP AOL Messaging, Community & Voice)

I want to echo Tom’s post. Community has been a core element of both AOL and Netscape since their inception and will continue to be. As the text on the site explains, we wanted to give a more traditional portal alternative to the Netscape users who requested it. You can rest assured that social news will continue to be an important part of what we do.

the team at netscape has been incredibly open to talking to anyone about anything related to the site. it’s sad how infrequently writers take advantage of this openness to conduct research before they speculate.

i’m happy to announce that today (just minutes ago) i was inducted into the digg.com 700 club. the group has a total of 5  members, out of which 2 are active (including me). i want to thank all the content producers whose stories i have submitted (for creating the great content) and all the digg users (who have been reading and digging my submissions).

80% of the work is done by the content producers, 10% by me, and the rest by the digg community, so this is an achievement for all of us.

check out my profile, and the complete rankings.

last august when i joined netscape, i left digg at a peak rank of #9. in the days and months that followed i started using digg less and less and as a result better and more relevant users replaced me.

now for about 3 months i have started using digg heavily again and have regained a position in the top 10.

check out my profile, and the complete rankings.

i’m happy to announce that today i was inducted into the digg.com 600 club. the group has a total of 4 active members including me. i want to thank all the content producers whose stories i have submitted (for creating the great content) and all the digg users (who have been reading and digging the content).

check out my profile, and the complete rankings.