Netscape in a Word: Stinks

I've been an active participant on Newsvine since January and enjoy all the features and the community interaction. But, I must admit, I get curious to see what the other sites have to offer from time to time. So I decided to check out Netscape.

Netscape is attempting to take the best parts of digg and Newsvine. The home page strongly resembles digg. However it is more cluttered with all kinds of links and icons that don't really get you to the news that you want to see. Corey Spring does look very happy, though ($1,000 buys at least a very bright smile) as his icon is prominently displayed under the "Netscape Navigators".

Netscape has too many channels. There are 30 of them in all. This lack of focus shows that they are trying to be all things to all people. Plus look at some of these channels. Are they really necessary? What the heck is "Do No Evil"? I believe that too many choices makes it more difficult to find the news in which you are truly interested.

Story submission is a huge pain in the ass on Netscape. Newsvine, in my opinion, has the simplest method of story submission. The little window that pops up on top of the story you're reading makes it very easy to include an excerpt from that story and makes it possible that you don't have to depend on your memory to get the headline correct if you need to re-type it. With digg you can keep one browser window (or tab) open on digg and another open on the story you're reading and then just cut and paste the URL and/or details from the story. With Netscape they offer you a submission link just like Newsvine but they do not employ the pop up window feature. Instead, upon clicking "Submit To Netscape" you are guided to a Netscape story submission page where some of the fields are completed for you just as with Newsvine. But you are now required to remember everything from the story you are submitting because the page you were on is gone. Furthermore, if you attempt to open the submission page into a new window or tab it will not fill in the fields automatically. It's just not well executed.

The tagging options are extremely limited. I'm not the best when it comes to tagging. I frequently forget to add a tag or have brain farts and don't tag appropriately. But Netscape only allows you 5 tags per story. What's the reason behind this? This makes it difficult to find stories that may be of interest to you. Additional tags can't possibly cause bandwidth or storage problems. I just don't understand why they would limit tags at all.

And last, there is no way to write your own column. This is the best feature of Newsvine that is not found on either digg or Netscape. You can submit other people's stories all day every day but you can never just give your own opinion (unless you keep your Newsvine account and submit your Newsvine column).

Netscape attempts to mimic digg and Newsvine. It gets closer to digg but the interface is too cluttered. It doesn't even come close to Newsvine in terms of finding stories of interest and the elegance of the interface. If they paid me to submit stories on Netscape I have to admit that I would do it. But, while they can pay me to submit they can't control where I read. Newsvine still beats both digg and Netscape for convenience, readability, and social interaction.

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