There is a short story in the NYT today about a small, but vocal, group of Netscape users who don't like the new, more interactive, Netscape. The story explains that a petition has been started to change the new Netscape back to the old Netscape where we (AOL) programmed the experience.
There is one piece of misinformation in the story: that we tried to silence the folks doing the petition by not letting them vote up negative Netscape stories on the new Netscape--that's simply not true. We've had a dozen negative stories about Netscape on the home page--just like DIGG has--and we understand that part of running a social news site is that your user base will use the site itself to talk to you. In fact, any negative story on AOL, Netscape, or myself immediatly goes to the number one position.
That's the price you pay for letting folks take control--they actually do it!
I think some folks don't understand that there is a window in which a story can remain on the homepage (just over a day). We do this so the news stays fresh (i.e. when you come back 24 hours later it's not the same self-propogating list stuck at the top level).
I respect the fact that a group of folks liked the original home page better, and they don't want to participate in the new social news site--it's not for everyone. However, this is a very small percentage of the over millions of unique users who come to Netscape, and for AOL there is a very strategic reason for evolving Netscape.com. That reason is we already have a professionally programmed portal in AOL.COM! Also, we told the users about the change for a month, but some folks I think ignored or missed the messaging. That's a big take away here: over communicate with your members (oh wait, I put this in a recent post--I guess I need to take more of my own advice). If I were to do this again I would put a message that blocked users from visiting the site until they had read a note about the upcoming changes. Live and learn.
Additionally, the fact was that the majority of users were not sticking with the old Netscape. A quick look at the stats (not Alexia please--it doesn't count the Netscape browser--where a large percentage of our traffic comes from) shows that Netscape lost 1/3rd of its audience over the past year.
So, we lost a third of the audience by not changing the site, and now by changing we're going to lose a very small percentage, but be back on a growth path.
Look at it this way: if Geocities could change itself to MySpace before losing it's marketshare to MySpace you would do that right?
Same thing here, we're in the middle of paradigm shift from top-down control to bottom-up participation, and when you make a radical change like that you're gonna get pushback. In fact, I'm really excited to see the pushback because it let's me know we are on the right track.
Any new service is gonna get folks who don't like it. The more radical or forward looking an idea is the more folks are gonna be shocked by it--and this is a radical (but soon-to-be established) concept.
We anticipated in our projections that a large percentage of the audience might not like the new portal (double digits) and we're well below that (single digits)--so, I think we did a good job. When you change the menu at your restaurant some folks are gonna like the old menu better... we understand that and we're sorry we can't maintain two versions of the site forever--but this is a business and we have to grow it. For those folks the AOL.COM portal is still providing the classic portal experience with a massive amount of new stuff including a ton of video and programmed news.
It is ironic, of course, that some folks are voting for *less* interactivity and control, but I understand it. I don't want the New York Times to be a social news site... I think.
Old vs. New Netscape (or "if you could change GeoCities into MySpace in 2002 would you have?")
Recent Posts
- The (evil?) genius of Nick Denton (7/03/2008)
- Used/antique phone booths (7/03/2008)
- User participation increases when you don't have to login. (7/03/2008)
- The Dark Knight First Five Minutes (7/02/2008)
- New Mahalo features: anyone can edit (even if not logged in) and anyone can create a new page (easily) (7/02/2008)
Reader Comments
(Page 25 of 25)482. re post #10: "we have over 20,000 active users currently on the new Netscape and many more readers, but only about 1,000 of those users have complained about the switch"
You can't be serious. When that many are willing to complain, you KNOW something must be very wrong. The vast majority aren't going to say _anything_ positive or negative. A thousand definite complaints... you should be back-pedaling as fast as you can.
Posted at 6:30PM on Jul 19th 2006 by Tom Liotta
483. Well, after reading literally hundreds of comments on this, I think the vote is in. Jason and the rest of the powers that be have truly missed the mark. Those of us that are disappointed by and do not like the new look are obviously not in the single digits as claimed in the lead in article.
As for the claim that users were notified that a change on format was coming, he is patently mistaken. My husband and I have been using the old netscape for well over 10 years (as both homepage / browser and for email) and we never received any notification, nor were we given an opportunity to try out a beta version (as would be expected).
I have had the opportunity to check out many other browsers and web servers. I have always used Netscape because it was the best. AOL and MSN could not hold a candle to the old format. I was very concerned that this might eventually happen when the merger took place. I am sad to see that my predictions were correct. It is quite obvious to me that the new leadership is not concerned with the true input and opinions of long time loyal users, but are rather only interested in pleasing the up and coming under 25 crowd. Contrary to managements opinion some of us do have brains and can think and reason about the validity of the news for ourselves. We do not need some hired blog "Anchor" to determine what we should be allowed to view.
As for the mail service, it sucks big time. I used to use netscape as my primary email, but now, I can barely keep the window open long enough to load the message, let alone read it. Also, it takes so long for the messages to load, I almost feel as though we are back to analog dial-up and version 4.0. I can cook a pizza faster than I can access my email. I too am shopping for an alternate browser and am considering using yahoo or MSN. That is hard for me to swallow because I truly thought that MSN was the worst possible browser available; now it seems worlds superior to the current netscape offering.
Jason, if you truly are listening, please hear the voice of reason and bring back a classic and user friendly service. I fear that you are loosing far more of the over 25 crowd than you are willing to acknowledge. I expect that soon we will be seeing news stories about the latest capers of the south-park kids instead of hard hitting news like the potential that WW III is starting right under our noses.
Thanks for listening. Very respectfully S.H.
Posted at 8:06PM on Jul 19th 2006 by Sheri
484. i hate the new netscape, i wish i could revert to the old one. the new one is poorly organized
Posted at 8:34PM on Jul 19th 2006 by holly
485. I have e-mailed netscape asking to be removed from their member list.
Posted at 10:28PM on Jul 19th 2006 by cora snowdeal
486. hey I agree I liked the old netscape also but hey aol bought them out so now I just use mozilla firefox(the hackers takeover of the original public code for netscape) ;)
Posted at 3:13AM on Jul 20th 2006 by tridiman
487. I do not like the new format. will not use aol.com.
Posted at 7:56AM on Jul 20th 2006 by Douglas Hardison
488. I absolutely will not use the "new" Netscape. As other commentors have stated, the news is not a popularity contest. Who cares what everyone else thinks. Let the users make those decisions for themselves. We are not the mindless public your arrogancy assumes. This format is painful to look at and worse to use; way too busy. Acknowledge you made a mistake, correct it and move on. By the way, AOL will not be used as my home page either, there are many better alternatives.
Posted at 4:04PM on Dec 4th 2006 by Dave
489. I usually don't comment on stuff, nor do interactive things such as blogs, chats, etc. Netscape has a great e-mail which I have been using. I've downloaded Internet Explorer and Firefox. Guess I'll move to an e-mail account using one of those. Your "social news" based on voting is nothing more than allowing people's response to dictate what is read. I don't care about hollywood gossip and the like. Oh well, some of us dogs are simply too old for teaching new tricks. STOP ALL THE OPTIONS!
Posted at 12:36PM on Mar 24th 2007 by Joe Donahue
490. It is the same with anything that seems to be working well, change it and make it better. No one seems to be able to remember the old saying, if it isn't broke don't fix it. The so called busness idea of making stuff better seems to always be fixing things that don't need fixing. If your going to add or change a part of a program why in the He-- don't you ask the people that use it what needs changed if anything. I have used Netscape since it was 4.0 and like it but I don't like the 8. what ever and won't try the 9. what ever. I run 7.2 and it works just fine.
Posted at 12:22AM on Aug 21st 2007 by Daniel Barnett
491. New netscape sucks as does new email.Lately cannot even access email. Hope to you can change things to make them even worse. What a mess!
Posted at 11:33AM on Aug 21st 2007 by John
492. I've used Netscape since there's been a Netscape. I enjoy the email programming. In the past, I enjoyed getting an overview of the daily news, but that has been hijacked by a small group who do not share my political views and the Netscape homepage has become a soapbox for the political left, with no room for diversity. Certainly, others feel the same. I get my news from the radio now, not from the internet as before. It makes me sick and I should change my homepage to FOX NEWS. Everyday it's "Bush Bash", "War Bash", and "Global Warming". Get back to some kind of balance and tell the "hijackers" to take a hike.
Posted at 5:24PM on Sep 2nd 2007 by Yvonne Lofton
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481. THE ONLY THING MISSING FROM YOUR NEW PAGE IS THE OPTION TO GO BACK TO THE OLD WEB PAGE. LET EVERYONE HAVE THAT OPTION AND YOU WILL HAVE A HAPPY GROUP LOOKING AT YOUR PAGE.
Posted at 4:34PM on Jul 19th 2006 by joe