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The Biggest Loss from Netscape Social News Becoming Propeller.comSep 12 2007 | Social Networks |
Yesterday Netscape made the official announcement that their social news site (currently at Netscape.com) would be moving to the new domain Propeller.com. This came on the heels of months of speculation and another update last week that they would be moving their ‘Digg clone’ off of the main page and moving back to the portal style site.
So what does this mean for you? To begin with, I think the traffic numbers will decrease (at least in the short-term) as some users make the switch and many move on to other places. Over the past few months we have seen an average of about 2,500 visitors for a typical Netscape front page. But the quality of what is on there right now (this is currently on the homepage with over 100 votes) is really effecting the level of traffic that is visiting. On top of that, there simply aren’t many links built from Netscape stories. I’ve discussed this with a bunch of colleagues and that sounds pretty right on for them as well. Hopefully, they will be able to move this completely out of Netscape and Digg’s shadow and build up a powerful, well trafficked site. I really hope this happens because just like you need alternatives to Google, you need alternatives to Digg.
But what’s the biggest loss in moving to Propeller.com? Moving from a PR9 site with over 20,000,000 links to a PR0 (not even) site with 10 links. Heck, Netscape didn’t even give it a real link in their blog post (they simply wrote http://www.propeller.com/). Why is this significant? Netscape was great for getting sites indexed quicker and for links from a trusted site. For example, take a look at a story that is currently on the homepage and the links that Yahoo is already showing for it:
On top of that you could use Netscape to indirectly rank for terms with new sites (the Netscape page ranks and someone clicks through to your site). For example something that got a lot of attention last year: DIY laser hair removal - a Netscape page ranks #5 in Google:
Netscape won’t be able to pass any of their link juice (or their nicely aged authority status) over the new site because they will actually be redirecting Netscape.com to aol.netscape.com. But then again Netscape’s Digg clone was started by a guy who hates SEO to begin with and maybe this is a good thing for them - the community doesn’t seem to mind too much based on initial reactions at the site. But as Danny Sullivan points out at least they could put up a landing page of some sort….
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Posted by Chris Winfield at 11:25 am
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15 Responses to “ The Biggest Loss from Netscape Social News Becoming Propeller.com ”
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Glen Allsopp
says:
September 12th, 2007 at 12:00 pmI think it’s a good move. I was never interested in signing up too Netscape because of what the site stood for (this will take some explaining but that’s for another day) and how i didnt think it would last.
I look forward to seeing propeller launch.
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Jake Matthews
says:
September 12th, 2007 at 12:08 pmI’m actually looking forward to Netscape as a portal again because similar to what you note about Google and Digg, you need “alternatives” to portals like Yahoo!.
The link loss does seem pretty big at this point.
Looking forward to more developments.
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Matt Jones
says:
September 12th, 2007 at 12:33 pmOn Techcrunch they seemed a lot less optimistic and gave the impression they thought Propeller was just going to go down the crapper, but I hope you are right.
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Chris Winfield
says:
September 12th, 2007 at 12:37 pm@Glen -sounds like you are an anti-AOL guy…
@Jake - interesting take….
@Matt - I’m actually not too optimistic but I would love to see it work out just so there are some alternatives. In any marketplace you need competition…
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QueenBeeMarketing
says:
September 12th, 2007 at 12:42 pmI’ll be really interested to see what kind of “culture” develops on the new site. It seemed harder to predict what would be popular on Netscape, while Digg and Reddit are much more predictable. Then again, it could just be me not spending enough time on Netscape. And I doubt it will take long for Propeller to build up authority and links - every site has to start some where, and Propeller has the advantage of carry over traffic from Netscape.
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Chris Winfield
says:
September 12th, 2007 at 12:48 pm@QueenBee - Netscape went through so many different changes in its short life as a social news site.
At first it was extremely easy for things to get to the homepage - then it became extremely hard as they were extremely paranoid about spam and would ban accounts at will - then it reverted back to being super easy again (as you can see by just looking at the homepage).
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Chris Bennett
says:
September 12th, 2007 at 1:09 pmI can’t believe they don’t have a landing page up. It seems like they want to lose momentum. I am sure people are dropping off like flies in the interim.
They should of put up page, and maybe even let people register or transfer their Netscape user names over. Even if they couldn’t submit or vote any stories, just something to start migrating.
SEL launched with over 30k links cause they were smart enough to put up a landing page with some basic info prior to launch.
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Chris Winfield
says:
September 12th, 2007 at 1:12 pmChris - great point. At the very least put the same exact post up on propeller.com as they had on the Netscape blog and let their users now that everything would be ported over/etc…
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Glen Allsopp
says:
September 12th, 2007 at 5:48 pm@Glen -sounds like you are an anti-AOL guy…
Not really, it’s basically that I:
Don’t like the design
Think it’s too political
Don’t like the fact there are ‘editors picks’Blah blah etc etc
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Andy Beard
says:
September 13th, 2007 at 4:07 amIt is a premium domain registered in 1998
If they are smart they will redirect previous content pages and above all the submission forms - the submission forms pass a huge amount of link equity to these sites.
There might be a drop, but it will also gain a life of its own and its own community which might become more varied.
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Chris Winfield
says:
September 13th, 2007 at 9:28 amHi Andy - from what I gather from one of the Netscape Scouts - everything will transfer, so I am assuming that means the pages as well - except for the homepage obviously which will be redirecting to aol.netscape.com..
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Janu
says:
September 13th, 2007 at 11:07 amvery nice post, i hadn’t even thought of that
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iBrian
says:
September 13th, 2007 at 4:19 pmSorry, but I’d have to be pessimistic here as well. Removing the social media tells me AOL see little value in it, and are basically shutting down the lights throughout their building. What’s probably most sad is the apparent lack of vision with AOL. Redirect Netscape.com to netscape.aol.com, so we can read regurgitated news? Sure, there’s value, planning and foresight in the user experience there, I’m sure. I guess AOL is too much of a wounded dinosaur to do anything but clutch it’s assets tightly, and hope it doesn;t go too far down the tubes too quickly.
2c.:
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Chris Winfield
says:
September 13th, 2007 at 8:12 pmIt will be really interesting to see how this plays out Brian…
September 19th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
[...] Netscape Social News is officially dead. Long live Propeller. We talked about this last week and its now official. Netscape has redirected their homepage to netscape.aol.com and the social [...]