The beta of Netscape.com is out.
I need to test it a bit before I comment.
UPDATE: Ok, that took all of 5 minutes, literally.
It's horrible! Way to go, Calacanis and AOL! Good thing Yahoo.com still exists, because Netscape AOL just killed its portal.
1) I notice the mail link goes to AOL's mail, but I hope that's just a bug
2) No TV listings in the TV category
3) Similarly to 2, above, no movie showtimes (where is Moviefone, which they own?)
4) Organization--if you can call it that-- is practically non-existent
5) I don't go to a portal to read about what other users think I should read (instead, I go to read what CNN, ABCNews and CBSNews think I should read; I recognize the contradiction)
6) It doesn't use SNS, so it didn't recognize my username and login
7) Again, going back to point 4, NO SUBCATEGORIES FOR ANYTHING! If I click on News, I'm not presented with any way of reading stories based on their category (one could call their tags a category, but to me it's not as helpful in grouping, since it's highly specific)
8) They have eight employed people named "Netscape Anchors," who decide which content to push. I don't know, just feels strange
9) You can't get a weather forecast, either
10) It's a copy of digg.com, for the most part. You could claim that portals were and are mostly clones of each other, but what set apart Netscape.com in the past was its exclusive content pulled in from its Time Warner network of brands.
So much for good-quality, organized, branded content. Although I concede the AOLTW merge was a dismal failure, it'd still be nice to see content from the Time Warner properties featured. TW has some great content. This really does beg the question: Is Time Warner preparing for a sale of its AOL property? That would explain the lack of TW content.
Seriously, this is a huge bomb. The folks at CompuServe must be muttering under their breath (if any are left who now care about their employer). This is AOL's final nail in the Netscape coffin. AOL has lost what little foothold it had in the portal market now, I fear.
The New York Times article says this redesign is "AOL's plan to keep and expand that audience," speaking of the already attritioning Netscape.com, but in reality, with all of the features they've dropped, I garner it won't gain any, and probably will lose even more.
Posted by stephend at June 15, 2006 8:13 AM