What is Digg?67 Comments
- venir, on 10/12/2007, -5/+102Looks like he gets what he deserved. Who would have thought his ingenius idea of paying for top posters wouldn't work out for him.
- tzmguitarist, on 10/12/2007, -2/+86Alex & Kevin should send him a cake.
- flag564, on 10/12/2007, -12/+71Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
And might I add...
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! - hellyes, on 10/12/2007, -8/+68kevin rose has got to digg this.
- Ascendant, on 10/12/2007, -4/+42Besides the inherent "lameness" factor in Calcanis' creation of his Digg clone, one has to think that the idea of trying to "port" Digg to Netscape.com made about as much sense as someone trying to copy MTV and then market it to retirement homes.
- OandA, on 10/12/2007, -1/+33Check out the comments on that page. Jason seems pretty pissed. He responded twice.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+39People should read Calacanis' response here:
http://www.valleywag.com/tech/exclusive/netscape-the-calacanis-effect-216074.php#c652594
This article is really just an attack on Calacanis (who provides a very plausible reason for the reduction in pageviews) and playing on the non-existant "digg vs. netscape" feud that exists *only* on digg. - IEatHamburgers, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26My college professor uses Netscape and he's only stuck in 1988.
- NanoStuff, on 10/12/2007, -4/+26Check out the alexa graph, you can go tobogganing on that thing!
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.netscape.com
Yea I know, it's alexa, but it's the best thing we've got.
And most of those hits were probably from Digg people checking up on how much Netscape sucks. - andybreene, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25Here is what Jason has to say:
Another classic Nick Denton hit and run story about a competitor...
Some facts:
1. If you look at unique users before and after the move uniques are down only 22%--which is just fine given that we move the email users over. In fact, the webpage views are up if you take the email users out.
2. We DIDN'T LOSE THE EMAIL USERS... we moved them to another domain inside of AOL (i.e. aim.com). AOL did this because they didn't want to manage the old Netscape email system which was not keeping up with new free email standards (think 2gig free).
3. The email page views are worthless--no one buys email inventory on the web.
4. The reason why the uniques are still high and the page views went down was because the email users do 100's of page views a day--AND WE DIDN'T LOSE THESE PAGE VIEWS... WE MOVED THEM TO AIM.COM.
5. The stats were not leaked--you're talking about COMSCORE. Give me a break.
Feel free to slam me Nick... I know you're having fun taking down anyone who competes with you during your time on Valleywg. First John Battelle... now me. Don't let the facts stand in your way of course.
You should do a blog post on Engadget vs. Gizmodo, Joystiq vs. Kotaku, and Autoblog vs. Jalopnik and how Weblogs, Inc. has crushed Gawker media in the only three verticals we ever competed in.
Or maybe you should do a blog post about how you're always asking your bloggers to out people--I've heard this from three Gawker bloggers so far.
Anyway, good to know that you're still the hit-and-run, facts are secondary, publisher you've always been.
We don't expect anything less from you Nick!
best j - fortressgame, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21that's called VH1, and it worked.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21"He'd been obsessed by Digg.com, a news site in which the community submits stories and votes the best to the top of the page."
That's a stretch. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+22Jesus, I thought only people stuck in 1996 used Netscape.
- Dag_Yo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20Digg: Simple, clean layout with unobtrusive ads, entirely user-controlled
Netscape: Complicated CNN/MSNBC-esque layout, large ads on top & sides
Perhaps in a perfect world, other sites would take this as an indication that:
1) We do not like obtrusive advertisements
2) We like to control our content
3) Despite our short attention spans, we do NOT need 4,382 links on every page
To use this example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pXL5_RvGrs
Ipod/Digg: Simple idea, simple packaging, quality product
"MS" Ipod/Netscape: Simple idea, complex packaging, mediocre product
The Digg users have spoken. Ignore us at your own company's peril. - IEatHamburgers, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18The MTV idea would probably work if it played oldies, though. At least the target audience could be interested.
Netscape, on the other hand, what audience could they possibly target? People who still use Netscape? - bastion_xx, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14After hearing him on that horrible TWiT and the on-going crip crap, I'm glad he's gone, gone, gone.
Calcanis - I hear Rocket Boom is hiring..... - vhold, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Oh I'm sure Digg is for sale, just probably for a lot more money.
- betona, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I built a multimillion dollar company and sold it. Mine was very profitable, too. My take on Mr. Calcanas's sale was huge luck on his part (and good for him!) and pure stupidity on AOL's part. For $25 million, AOL got a few hundred thousand unique visitors and a company that generates very little cash (remember kids, AOL measures cash in the billions). There's no way the deal made any sense on an ROI basis, as the financial press observed at the time. And now the brains behind it is gone and AOL owns yet another set of sites that aren't labeled "AOL" that will now begin their slide off into the sunset, following so many other brands that were purchased and abandoned by AOL before it.
Of course, AOL only blew $25 million on Weblogs which is nothing compared to the $8 billion they dropped on Netscape. Place your bets--how long until they make the DNS change so that when you enter netscape.com in your browser, you get aol.com?? - UrfTheWog, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Not sure how many of you fanboy's have actually built, run a company, and sold it for $25M. Heck, probably most of you have never even written or seen a business plan.
I'm a huge fan of Kevin's as well as Jason's. Have you ever listened to the Gilmor Gang podcasts? Jason's insight, openness, and humor totally made that show. The dude
is intelligent and an incredibly successful entrepreneur in my book.
Who cares if Jason copied and tweaked a model that Kevin copied and tweaked from someone else. Should we only have one car manufacturer, one flavor of jellybeans, one news website? How about one political party?
There's plenty of room on the net for Digg, Netscape, and any other social networking site.
Competition is a VERY GOOD thing - it's one of things that made this country great.
As long as Kevin and crew can remain innovative and diligent in various ways, Digg will do just fine.
Creating a successful company in a competitive business environment is for grown-ups and if you can't understand or get past that than go back to playing your video games. - Lacero, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I think Netscape also pays people to comment on their stories. Check out the first comment on the Rumsfeld story:
http://politics.netscape.com/story/2006/11/20/downfall-how-donald-rumsfeld-reformed-the-army-and-lost-iraq/#comments
By Edinbug: "What a fascinating read. First of all, it's very well written."
WTF?!? That is so lame. - headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5That's what did them in. It's not that copying Digg was such a bad idea. There certainly is a market out there for a Digg clone that isn't tech related. They just put it together so poorly. So much of the browser space was advertising. Even when clicking on a story link, the story link opened up in a frame that had more advertising.
And besides that, the rest of the design sucked. The whole thing was a big eye sore.
This is why so many web business fail: They are too focused on making money at all cost. Sites like Digg, Flickr, [insert any successful site], started small and very slowly grew to success. - amandaw33, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Shocker.
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Jason was planning to only stick around with AOl for a year. Jason was thinking of leaving aroudn this time but when Miller left it gave him the go ahead to do so too. Typical of the majority here to spread bias on something they hate so much.
- zionKing, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NCvS-kMPjg
- dknighton, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7This is the most perfect example of poetic justice I've ever seen. But not to worry, Jason...there are a lot of other great ideas out there on the Interwebs for you to steal. You'll be making an ass of yourself again in no time.
Buck up, little camper! Lots of portals yet to destroy! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You have to remember where alexa gets its data from.
100% from the stupid morons who not only use IE, but who also have the alexa spyware-toolbar installed. Most of these fops have simply never changed their home page from netscrape.com to anything else, hence the stable numbers. - wabbitman1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4karma...its called karma...
- fjvwing, on 10/12/2007, -1/+34) We like to read and join interesting communities.
The Netscape comments from users make Digg comments pages read like a transcript of the Alonquin table. Netscape's commenters seemed ridiculously petty, name calling, and just plain dumb thread populated but dumber people. I am sorry that I sound elitist, but whenever I looked at the community, I just did not want to be associated with it.
MySpace shows that people will put up with the absolutely worst web system of ads and visuals if the community is good. Netscape's was not. - ogre2112, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Not surprising. Who the hell uses Netscape anymore?
- Tetraca, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1After 2 popular sites with the same layout often the third withers. Heck, if you're dealing with cloning something like YTMND like vote2win.de did you're screwed from the start.
- drig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Doesnt look like traffic is all that bad according to alexa:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?site0=netscape.com&site1=&site2=&site3=&site4=&y=r&z=3&h=300&w=500&range=6m&size=Medium&url=netscape.com - waynechng, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I did say Netscape.COM right? I went to the website to read articles, not use their browser. I haven't used Netscape since their version 4.
- MackPrime, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33.0 nub
- Popdmb, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5I'm still scratching my head on his business model. Pay people to submit stories?
I know 3 million college interns willing to do the same thing for free. And I'm 1000% sure interns will do more in-depth research than refreshing google news to break a story.
As I've noted in a few Calacanis topics before, trying new methods (even as short-sighted as this one) is an admirable trait for a CEO. But criticizing digg for doing what he should have done in the first place? Very lame. - rileyjt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2For sure - and if you look at Netscape's traffic, they did have a nice spike when they first re-did the home page. It was all over Digg and other news outlets so of course we all went over there and checked it out. AOL can claim whatever they want, but advertisers are not going to hand money over simply because they got a little spike in their traffic.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Actually traffic is pretty bad according to Alexa, that link was for only the last 6 months. If you look at the maximum range: http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?u=www.netscape.com&u=&u=&u=&u=&r=max&y=r&z=1&h=400&w=700
You'll see that ever since that seemingly random boom in Q3 2004 (why was that?), traffic has been going down ever since. - betona, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I used to run a tracking and metrics department for a huge set of sites measuring PV's in the billions. Trust me--Alexa is wildly inaccurate and not worth paying much attention to. The real metrics would be private to the company, and then after that Comscore can get fairly close, but still has inaccuracies.
- grinch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yeah netscape sucks
- cpmcd2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1 JasonCalacanis says:
Another classic Nick Denton hit and run story about a competitor...
___________________________
Thats his comment on there - he must be referring to Rush Limbaugh's "Drive By Media" - sigmaman2, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Just a thought...
This story is on Digg, describing the downfall of Netscape's Digg-like front page. Out of curiosity, some of us Diggers did/will go to netscape.com to check it out, resulting in their biggest spike of users since the collapse. Then AOL might claim success because the person that caused the drop is gone, and now they have rebounded. Far-fetched, yeah. But any thing's possible. - Leopards, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The reason Netscape is no longer my homepage is, they quit updating the articles in the news sections!! I had articles From Sept. 9, 2006 still there in November!!! Then you would click to read an article and be taken to what looked a little like the Digg front page and the article you wanted to read was no where in sight and the search function didn't bring it up either!! Page was totally BROKEN!!NpmPK
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Wow. Using the graph's features, change the "reach range" to "max"
it's at it's all time lowest ever since alexa XD
++++dugg - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1wonder what he'll do next?
try to copy a social site like myspace but riddle it with ad's and give it aol hosting so it'll be down half the time?
wait, isnt myspace like that anyway ¬_¬ - mrteacup, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5God you guys are unbelievably stupid.
If you think that any Digg-clone is doomed to fail, you are basically saying that Digg is doomed to fail. If you think Digg is a great idea, then why wouldn't you want a high profile imitator like Netscape? Surely there would be no greater validation of the concept than having it copied by everyone? I can see the headlines - "STARTUPS TEACH OLD DOGS NEW TRICKS!" What could be better than that? I'm not saying that they did everything right, but I think we should be cheering them on not ripping on them.
But don't mind me. You guys go on with preserving your own sense of superiority now that you have achieved your lifelong ambition of sitting at the cool kids' table. - applepro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Copycats get their just desserts at the end. BE ORIGINAL. DON'T COPY.
- Artelomeus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2If he had read psychology books more often he would know that if you pay people for work they really like and would do without paying the enjoyment decreases because a motivation shift occurs.
- skitzot, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1PWND! :P
- happycube, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Calcanis ran into the basic problem of the imitator - you can't copy another concept and *not* improve on it markedly in some way and expect to gain the market/mindshare of the original.
For instance, the iPod wasn't the first portable mp3 player - at the time Creative's Nomad had much of the market. But the Nomad was big (looked like a CD player) and had a clunky few-line display with a generic LCD font, lots of buttons, etc. The iPod was a breath of fresh air with the wheel+buttons, the retro-Mac display (Chicago 12!), and better size and layout. It won then and the victory was cemented with iTunes, and the barriers to displacing the iPod are immense now. - chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1@ tzmguitarist
or they could send him some pie... of the humble variety. - Dolomite, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1digg 2.0 FTW!
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