I Digg Netscape.com!!!
I guess it became a bit of a hobby for me to compare major websites and their functionalities in this way. Of course, I’m a guy who needs to be doing this kind of research just so that I can keep up with the trends and provide better work for my clients. The last major review I did was Facebook vs. MySpace/Nexopia etc., and today I want to compare Netscape and Digg.
Today I want to cover the basics of these two community websites.
These sites will both :
- Allow its members to submit stories, and vote them up if they think it’s a good story/news/post/whatever.
- Has categories that react to the # of votes for stories, and features them on the frontpage of the site or the category depending on the # of votes.
- Allow comments to be left on the item on the Netscape site itself.
- Allow sinking or burying of a story that people feel is not up to par.
Now, the critical comparisons :
- Netscape features MUCH better categories. They are broader and more general, and it’s much easier for me to categorize my posts when I submit them to Netscape. On the other hand, Digg.com has categories that are MUCH TOO specified, but at the same time they don’t have too many categories so it’s painful to find the right spots for it.
- Netscape offers a navigation bar. Some people may hate this, but I love it. When you click on “View Story” it will show you the actual site, but with the Netscape navigation bar (a black bar on the left-hand side) which allows you to browse related stories, add votes to the stories, etc. For me this allows me to do more reading while I am still able to vote the good stories, and it allows me to read on and on without having to switch between windows/tabs. It allows me to enjoy a much more fulfilling reading experience that goes from one random site to another. It’s like having StumbleUpon.com AND Digg put together!!!
- At the top page of Netscape, they have some sort of a Javascript/Ajax tab that shows you the top stories of the top-searched tags at the time. This feature is innovative because it has nothing to do with the categories, but it only follows the tag statistics. It shows you the top-stories of the most-searched topics at that time and it is a great way to get a quick glimpse of what is happening today.
- Ok, to be fair to Digg.com, I’ll give them one vote - they have the unique title of “Digg” which is quite brandable, and from a marketing perspective they did well. Netscape on the otherhand uses the term “Vote” which is more generic.
I Digg Netscape!
As you can see, I have the Netscape plugin installed, and i will monitor the traffic regularly.
Hey Jeff,
Great review, thanks. Yeah, I really like the Netscape tool and the community too.
While I am not fond of the “sync” function (it’s kind of like going to the polls to un-vote someone) - at least I like that Netscape shows you who voted and who poo-poo’d the story. I don’t believe Digg or Reddit show you that, so you have people who just demote stories as a hobby.
Have an awesome day!
Dan
I’m a Netscape fan myself. They are supposed to have better clickers too, haha. They are not so prone to adsense blindness.
I’ve had better luck with votes and traffic with digg and reddit. It would be interesting to compare the hits you get from being on the frontpage of digg compared to netscape.
I think it depends on what kind of user group you are looking at.
I agree. I have had better luck with Netscape by far!!! Today for example has brought us currently, about 1300 visitors. Although this isn’t an everyday thing, it would take years for me to do that with digg, and digg is a bit off topic from what I blog about.
Wow 1300 eh? I guess Netscape does do the trick for traffic.. I’ll keep monitoring my stats.