One of the interesting things about a running a social news site is that you get an early warning system about not only breaking news, but also what people care about. Yesterday a story about Splenda from a questionable source made it to the home page. People are alarmed and the story has 36 votes and 42 comments already... our Anchors and Navigators are investigating the story.

http://health.netscape.com/story/2006/09/26/the-lethal-science-of-splenda-a-poisonous-chlorocarbon

It seems a lot of folks are really concerned about Splenda and we've mobilized dozens of folks at Netscape (users and staff) to investigate the issue.

The Netscape API is coming.... some folks are playing around already.

I love this one...

Solving the "giving credit" problem in social bookmarking.

One of the things that really frustrated bloggers when digg became popular was the fact that digg insisted that users link directly to stories--not the bloggers who found the stories. So, if Boingboing or Engadget found something interesting digg instructed the community to bypass those blogs and link directly to the source information.

The result? It looked like digg found the story and the people doing the hard work--the bloggers--got no credit.

The result? digg gets credit for being the place where cool things break, when in fact many of the stories are--for lack of a better term--stolen.

Now, I understand why digg came up with the rule. There were folks acting as "middle men" between good content and digg users. They would post a good story and link to their blog which provided no value. We have the same problem at Netscape today and we tell folks to not break the "middle man" rule which states that if you link to yourself you have to provide some significant value that the original source does not.

However, this doesn't solve the giving credit for finding something cool problem.

To solve this I've asked the Netscape team to add a [via WEBSITE ] link at the end of story capsules to give credit to the bloggers who work so hard to find these stories (see image above in yellow). I understand the issue because I'm on both sides of it running a blog network and a social news site.

Bloggers should be very wary of social news sites that don't respect them with the via link. If you find the story you should get some credit for it--credit where credit is due.

This feels like the best way to solve the problem. Thoughts?

I sent this internal note to a bunch of folks at AOL earlier today... sort of an update on the state of Netscape and what we've learned about the 1, 19, and 80%. After thinking about it for 27 seconds I realized that this is the kind of stuff I used to post to my blog and i figured I would share with y'all.

I have to keep reminding myself that the best feedback we got at Weblogs, Inc. was when we talked about our company publicly on my blog. When you get to a big company you tend to be more closed because people smack you down just because your big. I've been getting smacked down since I've gotten to AOL as a "sellout" or "big company guy," but I'm not going to let that change how I run my businesses. I beleive in transparency and the fact that the more you put out there the more you get back.

Sure, some folks will spin what I say as "AOL senior exec says BLAH BLAH BLAH," but frankly that's a small price to pay for gaining the trust of the community and the good advice they give you when you open up to them.

best j



Team AOL,

For those of you not watching the drama unfold in the social news space for the past couple of days, there has a been a big shift in people's thinking about us paying the top social bookmarkers for the 1-3 hours a day they put into sites like digg, delicious, and Netscape. Two months ago we were "destroying the space" by paying the top 1% of the user base, now we're considered the savvy ones who recognized that there is a real difference between the 1%, 19%, and 80% of the user populations (creatives, contributors, and consumers).

At its most basic what we've learned is that the top 1% of these community members deserve to get compensated for their time, and if you do compensate them they will be 1,000% more active and appreciative. Paying them isn't about the money as much as it is the recognition, and they are so psyched to be recognized that they will really go overboard in thanking you with very high-quality work. The Netscape Navigators are doing a phenomenal job of not only putting in good stories, but also of building a community. They talk to the users via site mail and explain to them how to participate. They let them know when they've made a mistake and how to fix it. They are mentors and leaders in the best sense of those words.

The 1% brings in the 19%, and that 20% bring in the masses/consumption class (the 80%).

Of course, Netscape was an established brand when we converted it. So, we had the the consuming masses (the 80%) and we hired the 1% (the creatives). What we're really working on right now is training and inspiring the middle class: the 19% we call the contributors. The folks who vote, comment, add friends, and send messages on the site. These folks are the most active portion of the masses and they are new to the social news process in many cases. We have about 1/3rd of those folks trained and we should build out our "middle-class" by the end of the year from what I can see.

I suspect this process will be the case for many of AOL's (and Yahoo's) user-driven projects. You'll have the masses by default, but not the creative and contributing classes. Those are the two you'll have to build.

So, I'm wondering if the folks on AIM pages or Uncut are seeing something similar and if similar strategies might work. Maybe Uncut should hire the top 20 video producers on YouTube to work for us? Maybe AIM Pages should hire the top 20 folks on MySpace to be part of our "leadership program" (or something like that). Have them train the user base and give feedback to the developers.

Some folks claim it's desperate to have to pay the 1%. That's pure *spin* by people who don't want to pay other people for their hard work. These folks are the life-blood of these systems and paying them isn't desperate--it's smart. Also, paying them does not stop other folks from want to get involved from getting involved. The folks being paid have obligations they have to meet, and the other 99% can come and go as they please.

The 1% are not getting paid for exactly the same things as the 99%--which was Yochi Benkler's big complaint about our Navigator program (he said it made the other 99% of folks into suckers). It turns out that the public understands that the Navigators have more to do than an average user (i.e. killing spam, getting rid of duplicate stories, helping users), and that they are obligated to show up for "work" every day. That last part sets the difference--the 1% we pay are obligated and the 99% are not obligated.

Anyway, just some thoughts for a Sunday.

best j

ps - here is the latest story giving us credit... i knew the tide would turn.
ps2 - votes and stories submitted broke records every 2-3 days over the last two weeks--and Netscape's web pages are growing again. Mission *almost* accomplished. (the mission for me is to double Netscape's traffic from the bottom out weeks of late August/ early September (when we lost the email users).

Site-based mail is really taking off on Netscape.

Andy created a slick new feature that puts a temporary alert on the top page of you site (a la Flickr alerts, which I've always loved) when you get a new message. The note closes after you check the message or click the close link.

The WashPost did an interesting story on our Netscape Navigators who are getting paid to cool hunt for news stories.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/AR2006082501308.html

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.

We're getting a ton of feedback on the site. I'm going to run through some of the top quesitons.


I understand the need to keep people on the Netscape page. After all, if you send them away, they don't see your ads, and then you can't turn a profit. But the side frame is a bit much; I'd much rather see a "top bar" akin to Google Images or something of that nature. J. Botter

J. Botter is referring to our "Navigator Frame" which you can see in the image below.

This is by far the most controversial part of the site design to date. The concept is that when you leave the site we give you a navigation frame that lets you see other related stories. The point of the Navigator is to help folks quickly navigate to other related stories--not to trap folks.

Important things to note:

1. You can click on the "via" link under the headline to go the site without a frame.
2. You can close the frame at any time
3. We don't put any advertising in it (that would be be wrong in my mind).

Regardless, we've spoken about the Navigator with the team and we're going to add a setting where you can turn it off--PERMENTLY! Look for the change this week.




Mike Doel: 1. It's clear that the editorial commentary and follow-up journalism is what will ultimately make this site successful. But, unless I'm missing it somewhere, there's no way to tell from the front page which stories have been given this treatment and which haven't. The front page should include some kind of badge or other visual indicator on stories that have input from your anchors.

Mike is 100% correct, you should be able to tell if there is Anchor Commentary from the top level.

As such we've added a little anchor next to headlines with anchor commentary (aren't we smart :-). You can see two examples below.




Mike Doel's second questions: 2. Your channel selection list is somewhat limited. And given the tagging of stories, it doesn't need to be. Let me create channels of my choosing based on tags.

Right now we have 30 top-level channels for people to put their stories in and you can pull up any tag at any time. I'm not sure exactly what more Mike is looking for, but the concept of channel for us is that these are places that have enough activity for us to put an Anchor on. So, Autos and Food have anchors dedicated to them to keep them nice and clean and populated. If we expand to quickly we're gonna have too much to manage in terms of top 20 lists.

Mike Doel's 3rd question: The local weather/news box seems a bit odd. It's like a half-hearted attempt to maintain a portal experience. Either embrace being a portal and make it possible for me to aggregate several other personalized items or drop it. As it stands now, I doubt I will be conditioned to go to the site to find my weather.

If you run a portal you have to have weather and maps--it's that simple. We'll add more items soon--give us some time dude!

Mike Doel's 4th question: 4. It's unfortunate that the authentication mechanism used on the site appears to be a roll-your-own deal instead of reusing SNS. If you had used SNS, you would have had a built-in audience already from every AIM, AOL, and Netscape user who already has an account. I can definitely see confusion in your audience when you move this out of beta and all of the people currently using www.netscape.com don't understand why they need to recreate accounts.

We are going to support SNS soon, so your AIM and AOL logins will work on Netscape. This is gonna take a ton of time, so we didn't want to hold the site up for that one feature.

Mike Doel's 7th question: Somewhat related to comment 2, will I be able to subscribe to RSS feeds based off of things like "stories with anchor followup", or "stories with tag X", or "stories voted on by user Y", etc?

Everything on the site will have an RSS feed shortly (many do already, they are just not exposed). We are working on some scale issues with RSS so stay posted.

There will also be an Anchor Commentary Tracker (with RSS) shortly.

Scott-O-Rama says: This may be a bug, but I sick and tired of signing in over and over again. I have cookies enable, so remember me already!

It's a bug, it's been fixed. Clear your cookies and restart your browser and you should be good.

Scott-O-Rama says: It would be nice if I could see who has vote on a particular story.

No joke! We forgot to put that in... we're working on it. It will be on the permalink page.

Scott-O-Rama says: Let me edit tags on stories I submit. This is crucial as I mistagged one, and now there is nothing I can do about it except possibly resubmit the story.

We are working on this. We don't want folks editing stories because then they could put out one story, get a bunch of votes and then change to some crazy story (i.e. a hate site) and everyone who voted for it would have their name on a hate site story--not good. I think letting people add tags might be ok. Right now our anchors are adding tags, so if you have a problem just hit the feedback button on the top right and send us the extra tags.

Scott-O-Rama says: Create bookmarklets and buttons for people to add on their site. This is also crucial. It will give you more publicity and make it much easier to submit stories.

Good idea. :-)

Scott-O-Rama says: Put more emphasis on the "Find New Stories" area. The new Netscape beta has only been live for a day or so, but already the front page content is stale. Very stale. Encouraging visitors to look at new submissions and vote on them will help keep the site fresher.

This is an issue. Right now you can find new stories by:

1. Going to the channels
2. Hitting the "next page" link on the TOS (top of service/homepage) or on the channels page.
3. Looking at your friends stories.
4. Looking in the Tracker.
5. Using the Search.

Note: The home page was stale because our "velocity" formula didn't have an downward movement. So, we added a "gravity" formula which pulls stories down the page. It might be *too* fresh now. We're gonna need a week or two to figure this one out.

Scott-O-Rama says: The site holds a lot of potential, and I'm glad to see the Netscape name reborn. When I read the NYT article and saw that you were in charge, I was glad because I love what you did with Weblogs, Inc.

Thanks! We're off to a good start and the feedback from folks like you is really helpful. We're in uncharted waters right now, and we're gonna need a lot of help finding the new world!

Let me start by saying I love(d) the Economist and read it front-to-back on every flight I take. It's well written and I *assumed* well researched. However, after reading a bizarrely inaccurate story on AOL I posted a response to the facts.

It seems my comments on the Economist's highly inaccurate, AOL-bashing story have paid off. In the process of correcting the story I've uncovered exactly what I suspected: the author spun the facts to slam AOL. Check out this comment, in which the highly-respected Kevin Werbach says the reporter misused his quotes.

Note: One of the reporters on the story, Tamzin Booth, contacted me by email. I'd love to hear her defend the story in the comments below.

Kevin's comment:

It was interesting to read how that piece came out. I told the reporter I was a contrarian on the topic, and actually thought AOL was well-positioned. He used the one (backward-looking) negative sentence of my 3-paragraph email, and vaguely paraphrased the rest.

Anyway, my point was that "social network" does not equal "Friendster/MySpace". And that AOL actually has all the hard-to-acquire assets and experience it will take to monetize social software in the broad sense.

As you point out, no one expects much of AOL these days, which is a good place to be. Keep in mind that Yahoo! was seen as a dog 3 years ago, until Semel & Co. turned things around. Good luck....

-k-

Yesterday we had a good time playing with Newsvine. What did we learn?

1. Newsvine's interface is really complicated--it takes a good hour or two of playing to figure it out.
   
2. It takes 3-5 votes to get a story to land on a category page.
3. It takes 5-10 votes to get on the TOS page (TOS = top of service for those of you who don't work for a major portal :-)
4. You don't add friends on Newsvine, you "watch" people. Not sure I like that term--feels like being a stalker.
   
5. The fact that they have a license to the AP is really cool because they can run really nice, big photos--DIGG/Delicious ain't got no photos
6. 
7. The Conversation Tracker (image one, right) is a neat feature that allows you to quickly popup an AJAX box that shows you activity on stories you've submitted (i.e. if someone comments or votes on your story).
   
8. The Read Article button is a good innovation since most folks on DIGG don't know when they click on a headline or comment link if they are leaving the site or not. On Newsvine you're not leaving the site *unless* you hit that button.
9. Featured Writers is a good box because it rewards folks for being active, and let's face it people are driven by two things in this space: recognition and affiliation (their ain't no compensation).
   
10. Newsvine has a really bizarre MLM (multi-level marketing) scheme where they will split revenue with you for your articles and your friends articles. It's really complicated and it will never work. They will drop it I'm sure.
11. Overall I give the site a B. They've added some nice features to the socail bookmarking space, and if they can clean up the site a little bit they will have a real winner on their hands.

Questions to folks in yesterday's Newsvine UFG (Unauthorized Focus Group):

1. How long do you think it will take an average user to understand what is going on at the site?
2. What do you think are the best 2-3 features of the site?
3. How would you compare the Newsvine experience to DIGG, Delicious, and/or Ma.gnolia.com?
4. What would you change about the site?
5. What are the worst features/biggest issues with the site?
   

OK, today's UFG is Ma.gnolia.com. My user account is:

http://ma.gnolia.com/people/jasoncalacanis

Got the note below from Squidoo today. I hate this MLM (multi-level marketing)/referrer program stuff. I know it works, but it feels icky to me. We thought about all these models when we started WIN and found that you're better off finding the best of the best and paying them well to make a "lens" of the web.

Quality folks don't do the MLM stuff. MLM stuff draws the low-rent, scammers of the world (think: the folks you know who join those viatim cults).

I love Seth (I would invest in NASDAQ: SGOD), and I think Squidoo has About.com potential, but I think it's not gonna work as it is structured today because there will be too many "experts" in each vertical, and the truth is that most folks are not really experts. Less is more. No one on Squidoo will do a better job covering gadgets than Engadget, stocks than TheStreet.com, or Hollywood gossip than Defamer. Real experts command real money, contingent money draws the weak experts.

[ Note: I know Seth's response will be that the best lens creators will be voted up, but the truth is that the best lens creators will never *show* up because they will be getting paid by folks like About.com, Weblogs, Inc. and MSM publications. ]

Here is the note from Squidoo today:

Great news!

Every penny earned so far in the Squidoo public beta test has been donated to charity. That's thousands of dollars for three
great organizations: The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Room to Read, and The Acumen Fund. Congratulations.

But now... it's time to start paying YOU. From this point forward any royalties your lenses earn are well and truly yours. (And we're
backdating the start of the first pay period to March 1, 2006). Find out more about how you get paid.

So now what? Three things you should know:

1. We just introduced a powerful new eBay module. Highlight relevant products. Promote your own auctions. Share items you're bidding on. Get a commission on every item sold.

2. Refer a friend, get $5. When someone you've referred earns her first $15, you and she BOTH get an extra $5. Find out more here: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/refer

3. Our new partnership with CafePress brings lensmasters and shopkeepers together. Get unique new lens content from the popular CafePress module.

Thanks, and let us know what you think!

The SquidTeam
Seth, Corey, Megan, Heath and Gil

My pal Shawn Gold gave a keynote yesterday explaining the complicated, yet effective, advertising marketing on social networks. As we've discussed here a couple of times, it's gonna take a lot of work to get these networks optimized to produce results, but the folks who do take the time will see some nice results.

My favorite nugget: SoaP is doing a user-generated commerical contest. Wow...

I'm playing with Newsvine today... trying to figure out how it works.

If anyone wants to come play with me my account:
http://jmc.newsvine.com/

some news I've posted (post some comments/votes!!!)

http://jmc.newsvine.com/_news/2006/03/30/151226-youtube-cleaning-up-its-actsome-free-advice
http://jmc.newsvine.com/_news/2006/03/30/151243-time-to-start-a-business-or-not-the-jason-calacanis-weblog

What do you guys think of Newsvine?
Please post your thoughts and account names in the comments so we can all hook up over there.

Got a lot of great interesting feedback on my "problem with social networks" post and wanted to get more specific on a number of issues.

1. I do believe social software will become a big business.
Although banner ads don't work well on social network sites that doesn't mean a marketing solution doesn't exist. As Jon pointed out in the comments, the right system hasn't been created yet. My old pal Mark Jeffrey makes a very solid point that these networks collect tons of personal information that they will be able to market against in the future. Behavioral targeting (targeting based on what you do, not what you say you do) is clearly going to be big. If we know you search for people in Santa Monica and that you visited a English bulldog group we know that pitching you on a local dog food store in Santa Monica is a good idea.

2. Why don't display ads work well?
Social networking sites, when they are at their best, are like the best party you were ever at when you were single. Imagine you're at that party and you see five beautiful people you want to talk too. You start an amazing conversation with one of them, and in the background there is a commercial playing on the flat-screen monitor. Do you stop talking to the person you just met to watch the ad or do you focus your attention at the person you've just met? Exactly.

Now, let's say that commercial was about the new Star Wars movie you've waited you're whole life to see, or it is about a car you're considering buying--in other words the ad is targeted to you. Do you stop talking to this new person to watch it? Maybe, but you're still not gonna give it your full attention (unless you're a rude idiot).

So, how do you marketing to folks at a party is the question. The answer, in my mind, is that you throw the party. So, you're meeting cool people at a party for the new Corvette and there is a Corvette in the middle of the room, there are Corvette themed drinks, the staff is wearing Corvette tshirts, and on the way out they give you a gift bag with a little Corvette car in it. The party and the people at it have rubbed off on the Corvette, and Corvette knows that, at the very least, you've seen their car in person. Mission accomplished!

The problem with event-marketing is, of course, that it is very expensive (think $100-1,000 a person) and you can only reach a small number of people at a time (think 100-1,000 people). Compare that to a TV commercial, radio ad, or Internet ad where you can reach someone for pennies a person--and millions of people at a time.

Clearly the future of social networking is making online event marketing scale.

3. What about vertical social networks?

I think these are gonna be big winners. Linked in, filled with business folks, is more vertical then Friendster and MySpace, and as such they can tap Office Depot or IBM and say "hey, these are all business folks, and we also know that these 134,000 people are in sales positions--let's sell them an ultra light portable!" That's hot. Ted Rheingold from Dogster points this out in his comments.

4. Is social networking a fad?

Of course it is, but remember that fads are what we call revolutions before we know what they are. The Internet and jogging were both fads at one point, now they are huge activities with billions of dollars in revenue. Is MySpace a fad? Well, that depends on their execution. Clearly they have captured folks imagination, and the question now is if they take that opportunity and build EBAY or Geocities. Little things become big things quickly in our industry, and big things can die almost overnight. It's all about the details.

My gut tells me MySpace will be here in 10 years, and that their success will be based primarily in pioneering a new, scalable, model of advertising (and I have a lot of inside info, so you should trust me on this one :-).

[ Note: If you want a really smart persons take on the "is MySpace a fad" meme you need to read what Danah has to say here and here. ]

JM gives an interview to USA Today about some new AOL products in the social networking and VOIP space.

Now, I can't talk about the details on these new projects. However, I have seen them and been lightly involved in them and I can tell you they are very, very slick.