Propeller, AOL's social-news site that's never really managed to catch on, has a brand new look Tuesday. It's the third major rehaul since the service was launched as Netscape.com in mid-2006. Gone are the drab blacks, greens, and oranges from the Netscape.com days along with the teeny, tiny text that made me reach for the Ctrl+ shortcut in my browser. In its place is a more retro scheme with vibrant colors and a banana-shaped mustached mascot.
That's not the biggest change though. The old voting system that mimicked Digg's one vote per user model has been turned on its head with a new one that ranks stories on a scale from 1 to 10 with some of the hottest stories getting play on the front page of Netscape (formerly Propeller.com's domain) and eventually AOL.com.
Propeller's new look is retro--to the max. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: CNET Networks)The new scoring system is actually a hybrid of any story's play within the Propeller community, combining user votes (called "props") with clicks, user comments, and overall voting velocity. My guess is that while more transparent, this new system won't make a whole lot of sense to people who want to click on a voting button and see a noticeable change. At the moment, coming to the front door of Propeller yields an entire page of stories ranked 10. Newbie users who have come to expect a more standard ranking system on services like Reddit and Digg will be scratching their heads to find the good stuff.
Other changes that are bound to confuse users are the new commenting system and upcoming stories queue.
The comment system throws in a somewhat befuddling five-star ranking system that includes a karma tracker, along with two different ways to expand and contract comment threads to save space. For longer threads you'll have to expand the conversation 25 comments at a time, making it beneficial to jack someone else's thread if only to get higher screen presence.
Likewise, the upcoming stories queue called "Just In" is simply overwhelming. It houses upcoming stories in a similar fashion to Digg Spy, however you can't pause the stream to dig through it, or sort out what types of site activity you want to filter out. In perusing links, simply scrolling down the page made me lose track of a story I was going to come back to. With more users, that same story could fly right off the page.
There is light at the end of the tunnel for Propeller, and that light is groups, a feature that lets people submit and watch stories by interest just like the groups functionality found on FriendFeed. Each user can only create one group (ever), but can join as many as they'd like, something that's bound to change as the service adapts. For now you can browse through a directory of groups and contribute links and discussion once you've joined up.
Propeller still has one huge weapon on its side and that's two pages that get a lot of traffic (Netscape and AOL.com). These can be leveraged to promote some of Propeller's group activity and story promotion. As we've seen with Yahoo's Buzz community, smart leveraging makes people and publishers want to use your tool. In the case of Propeller, we just haven't seen that same system take off. (Pardon the pun.)
Normally we don't report acquisition news, but this one is pretty interesting. MSNBC has scooped up social news service Newsvine for an undisclosed amount. Both services are based out of Seattle and have been in talks for the last five months. Newsvine will continue to operate independently and serve up a mix of professionally produced and user-generated content, remaining a separate brand and entity from MSNBC.com. But content from Newsvine users could be making its way onto MSNBC.com in the near future.
This is a really solid deal for both parties. Newsvine and its users get a potentially larger audience with original stories being promoted to MSNBC's front page, and, at the same time, MSNBC gets a hotbed of writing and content from a fervent Newsvine user base. In its announcement, the company also quietly noted that the service would actually be better due to the hosting improvements provided by MSNBC compared to their currently "cost-conscious" setup.
Newsvine users shouldn't be too worried about listing the "indie" feeling of Newsvine though, contributing newsmakers to the service will actually have a potentially larger audience than before considering MSNBC.com pulls in a staggering 29 million unique visitors a month.
The acquisition of Newsvine marks one of the latest buy-outs of a social news service since Reddit in late 2006. While other corporate "answers" to popular social news services like Digg and Slashdot seemingly flounder (like Propeller.com, formerly of Netscape.com ilk), Newsvine is a different breed. Instead of submitting links and having a hundred or so characters to write out their opus, Newsvine is centered toward citizen journalism, and rewards its users with revenue sharing and story promotion that is bound to go up with this potentially larger audience.
For more, see the story on CNET News.com
Of all the days to relaunch its Digg clone, Netscape has funny timing. Propeller, the new face and name of the otherwise identical social news service, went live today. As we wrote about earlier this month, Netscape.com now redirects you to the cobranded AOL/Netscape start page that serves up a regular assortment of news stories and links, along with plugs for Propeller. Netscape.com and AOL.com users also get a new box with five of the most popular stories on Propeller.
The news comes the same day as a huge overhaul to Digg's user profile system. A move that brings in a handful of social networking and bookmarking features to the popular social news site.
Already previous users of Netscape.com seem pretty happy with the move, although there were scattered reports of some having difficulty logging in with their Netscape credentials. On a side note, a Propeller user dug up the domain history of Propeller.com, noting it's been owned for 4,567 days--making it more than 12 years old.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Well that was quick. Just a few days after Netscape's announcement that it was shelving its social news service away from the hallowed Netscape.com domain in place of what is essentially AOL's front page, the service has already been given a new name and URL. It's called Propeller.com (link dead ends right now), and that's about all Netscape's Director Tom Drapeau was willing to divulge about the rebranded site in his announcement post on the official Netscape blog.
The new logo is arguably well done, but what's missing here are some details about any tweaks or changes to the rudimentary functionality of the site, and what really separates it from Digg besides a layer of editorial funneling. If it's just a new logo and domain, Netscape has an uphill battle ahead in attracting new users, even with the free traffic that's bound to come from whatever promotion or integration it gets with the new portal site--which in my guess is going to be far fewer free eyeballs than Netscape got before.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
- prev
- 1
- next
