Amazing how Mahalo Share works screencast by ShawnSmith (shawnsmith's blog):



Thanks a lot Shawn!

Great story in the WSJ about the buzz being generated by the top users at digg, Reddit, Newsvine, delicious, stumbleupon, and of course Netscape. The article really shows how the top users in these systems have become more than just "users," and the WSJ seems to really get that folks can be paid to do a job and not be corrupted.

Of course, when you pay people to do an editorial job you have setup a system for them to do so without compromising their ethics. We did this at Netscape by letting the Navigators blog/bookmark things they selected (i.e. unlike PayPerPost we didn't tell people what to blog about--let alone tell them it had to a be a positive result).

AOL is really doing a great job of supporting Netscape from what I can see. They haven't cut the budget, and it seems that the tech roadmap that we setup when I was there is being executed on brilliantly (it really is an amazing tech team over there!). The Netscape 9 browsers is ground breaking no many levels, and the stats from Netscape six months in are *exactly* like digg's after six months (250,000 stories and 150,000 members @ Netscape--not to shabby!).

AOL is sitting on a powerhouse with Netscape and I hope the give it a full two year runway because that's what it takes to build a community system like this. Netscape is the #1 or #2 social news system in the world and AOL owns 100% of it--that's big. CondeNast owns the #3 system with Reddit, and digg is probably gonna get snapped up by Yahoo, Google, or Newscorp I'm sure. So, AOL got essentially a free foothold in this emerging space because Jon Miller, Ted Leonsis, and Jim Bankoff made a long-term bet that is *just* starting to pay off.

I really hope Randy Falco, Ron Grant, and the new team over there let Netscape continue to grow because these systems could wind up being the core of the next generation portals.

My plan was to go to 50 Navigators with six months, and I think Netscape is at around 25. I highly encourage the team over there to get right to 50 Navigators @ $1,000 a month and then start a second program with 200 Navigators at $500 a month. This second group of Navigators who have a lower hurdle of work (say 100 stories per month baseline), but would be focused on the 30 channels. So, you would have 250 Navigators total with 6-10 on each channel. This would make the channels full and give Netscape a chance--for only $250,000 a month--to really own the broad social news space.

As the story showed digg, reddit, delicious, and Newsvine are the perfect place to look for emerging talent and pay them.

If I was CEO of StumbleUpon I would raise $10M and pay the top 250 folks $500 a month for contributing to the system. It would make the system go off the charts.

Anyway, I'm out of the social news business... although I wish I wasn't I really love what Netscape's doing and I talk to members of the team and community over there on a daily basis.

PS - The 9.0 browser is amazing!!! Great job... don't forget my News drop down menu!

Wow.

Like wow, wow.

Today's Kevin Rose announced that he is taking down the top users list at digg because of the top diggers are getting blamed by "some outlets" (I guess that would be news outlets) as the cause of manipulation on digg.

Well, truth be told if you take the negative baggage out of the world manipulate and just look at it as "to change something" it is very true that the top users change (aka manipulate) digg. The whole concept of social news/bookmarking is that users can have an impact. So, those outlets are 100% correct that the top users control much of what you see on digg, and the users are not at fault for trying to have an impact.

The problem really is that there is a perception that those users rule digg--and in fact they rule somewhere between 1/3rd and 1/2 of digg from what I can see.

Most of the top users I've talked to over the years are very, very driven by that top list. They want to climb higher, they talk about strategies to climb the rankings, they build tools to get to stories first, and they lament their inability to sustain their position when they fall.

digg motivated the top users in the system with recognition and now that digg is "at scale" they really don't need this rabid group any more. In fact, the value of a motivated top 100 and their never-ending quest to climb the rankings is not worth the negative impact and press it has on digg is what I'm hearing from Kevin. digg wants to shake the fact that the top stories are controlled by a select group of individuals and this is not the first step in that direction. Remember digg already dinged people for going direct to the permalink to vote (as opposed from the on deck circle).

This is the gift and curse of social news... your existence is based on user participation, and your existence can be destroyed by certain types of user participation (i.e. spam, payola, gaming).

Of course, since digg has an API isn't this all moot?! Won't someone create a top-user list in 10 minutes after digg shuts their list down?


I applaud Kevin for making the bold move, but I don't think this one has legs. I think the top users deserve their recognition and if Kevin is not paying them for their thousands of hours a work and year AND not paying them with recognition what's left?!

The driving forces in these system are (in order:

1. recognition
2. affiliation
3. compensation

All that digg really has left now is affiliation, and the question is will that be enough. I wish him luck.

I don't know Randy Falco or Ron Grant, but I wish them luck. The NYT says they have a long view of AOL, everything I read says AOL's is going to be cleaned up and sold.

My advice to both men: start blogging today. AOL was a very closed culture when we got there a year ago, and blogging is what really pulled the company into the Web world. There are dozens of important folks in the company having honest discussions on blogs and the best way for you two to build AOL is to embrace the culture of honesty, transparency, and debate. Blogging is the best medium for this. Take a page from Microsoft and let all your team members blog, and even pay some folks to be company bloggers. Let it all hang out, let the marketplace tell you where to go, and be open about everything--the good and the bad.

Even though I was at AOL for only a year it felt like home. ~50 members of "my team" are still rocking it out at Netscape, WeblogsInc, and Blogsmith, and I really hope the new guys recognize the amazing potential those groups have and continue to invest in them.

Weblogs, Inc. has grown into an eight figure business at AOL over the past year and I think it could be a nine figure business if they keep investing in it. Easily.

Netscape has continued to advance and grow since the bottom out in October. It takes 2-3 years to build an online community like Netscape, not three to six months. Social news is the future and Netscape is in first or second position on every important factor in that race (along with digg). To give up now would be such a wasted opportunity (especially since there are 500 folks trying to get into the top five slots right now!). I mean, Conde Nast just bought reddit--a distant 3rd or 4th to Netscape and digg.

Blogsmith is a fantastic platform that could rival TypePad and WordPress in the market place if AOL put some muscle behind it. Brian is a genius and AOL should really pull him in to the senior management team--guys like him don't wind up in big companies often.

Anyway, I've got to get back to my day job... I don't work for AOL anymore but I still spend 2-3 hours a day thinking about and talking to the folks who run those businesses. Giving them advice (solicited and unsolicited), and participating in and using those fine services and products.

Randy & Ron: If you every need any free advice on them or want to grab lunch you know how to reach me. Good luck and please take care of my babies. :-)

I just added another page to the Wikipedia: social news.

Social news is obviously very different than social bookmarking, which is already in the wikipedia.

It would be great if folks could help me expand the topic.

It seems the very smart folks over at Maxim.com, Blender.com, and AskMen.com have gotten into a little battle to see who can get more stories to the Netscape homepage. Funny.

From what I can tell from the voting pattern these folks work at Maxim.com (or just love the site):
http://www.netscape.com/member/music123
http://www.netscape.com/member/fadedfromwhite
http://www.netscape.com/member/dantethief

... and these folks work at (or love) AskMen.com:
http://www.netscape.com/member/zack23
http://www.netscape.com/member/daniel19
http://www.netscape.com/member/bassil/
http://www.netscape.com/member/armando/
http://www.netscape.com/member/dimadoo/

You can see the Blender stories tagged here:
http://music.netscape.com/tag/blender

NetscapeDevs: I wish we could search the site by domain name fyi.

To the folks at Maxim and AskMen I ask a couple of favors:

1. Don't create multiple accounts (sockpuppets) and vote for your own stories.
2. Please be involved in the Netscape community outside of promoting your own sites. Vote for other stories, submit other news stories, and post comments on other news stories.
3. Don't group vote.
4. Put where you work in in your bio on your member page. I think it's best to be upfront that you work for the sites you do. There is no rule against putting your own stories up... so say who you are!

If you stay away from those first three votes you'll be cool. If you break those first three votes you will set off the alarms (computer and community) and your site could get banned for two weeks/three months/a year (check the FAQ for details).

Other than that... digg 'Scape on!

Note to folks gaming : Be careful... we can obviously track IP and email addresses, and your voting records are public so if you're gaming (to much) you will get put in the sandbox.

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).

Update: This story has been DUGG (but is not yet 'Scaped).
Update2: Looks like the story has been killed on DIGG--go figure. :-)

OK, it's on. :-)

On the latest DIGG Nation (minute 8), Digg co-funder Kevin Rose goes on a massive attack of my plans to hire a dozen top social bookmarkers, but he doesn't seem to have a point about it. I'd actually be interested in hearing what he thinks about paying folks to do social bookmarking, but instead he just personally attacks me.

This is a serious discussion and I'm saddened that Kevin has reduced it to personal attacks. At the very least he could have a serious discussion about it *AFTER* he attacks me.*

Also, Kevin has some facts wrong:

1. The top DIGG users have not changed that much over time.
2. The top DIGG users are not responsible for 14% of stories--they are responsible for over 50%.

Also, the truth is that DIGG, REDDIT, Newsvine, Delicious, and Netscape will all succed together. There are very few winner-take-all verticals on the Internet. There are 3-5 major players in email, IM, and search--no one owns 80-90% of a market. It really isn't about Netscape vs. DIGG... in reality the battle is "social news vs. top-down news." Kevin and I are brothers in arms right now and at some point I hope he will realize that.

The top ~50 members on these services are responsible for over 50% of the top stories--that's a straight up fact and Kevin knows it. That seems to scare the heck out of him, and it shouldn't. I've created a market for these users, and others are about to jump in and do that same (I know this for a fact). So, if there is gonna be a market for community leaders, why not just join the party Kevin? You raised a ton of money and you can raise more. You're making money from advertising and you can easily afford to pay the top 12 users $1,000 a month each--share the wealth dude! Why not carve out 10-20% of your revenue for users?

It only makes sense that folks should be paid for community leaders.

Kevin Rose is going to make millions of dollars (perhaps tens of millions) when he sells DIGG to Yahoo (my best guess). When he does sell DIGG--and trust me it will be sold before in the next 12 months--he will have done it on the backs of those top 50 members. Those top 50 members will get exactly... ummm..... nothing. If I was running Netscape as a startup I would create a bonus pool for these users in the case the site gets bought. I can't do that given our structure, so we're gonna just pay folks. Kevin should do something similar.

* For those of you entrepreneurs watching make a note: you know you're winning when the debate when the other side opts out of the logical discussion and moves to personal attacks.

** Update: A considered story on the issue here--I wish Kevin would take this issue seriously and discuss it like Jay does.

When Brian and I started Weblogs, Inc. the idea of paying bloggers--heck, even making money from blogging--was considered offensive to many. Blogging was, as the case was stated, a highly personal activity that should not be trivialized by the forces of commerce and greed. I don't have a complicated relationship with money or capitalism: I love them both and see them as simply as fuel and the process by which fuel is produced. Money to me means time, time means quality, and quality means success.

Quality. That single factor is what determines the winners in our business. Google's search is of higher quality than Yahoo, MSN, and even AOL's. Because of that Google wins. Engadget is of higher quality than Gizmodo and they are ranked first and second place in their space. Similarly, LifeHacker is of better quality than DownSquad today and as a result they are ranked one and two in their space. For background, my friend Nick Denton of Gawker fame owns Gizmodo and LifeHacker, and we (AOL) own Engadget and DownloadSquad. My point here is that in order for us to beat LifeHacker we need to increase our quality, and in order for Gizmodo to ever beat Engadget they need to increase their quality. The only way to do that is an investment of time. Time equals money, so they both need an investment on a cash basis.

Today we have around 200 bloggers on the Weblogs, Inc. payroll. Two years later John Battelle took the idea and extended it in a blog repping business. Om Malik has raised funding and stolen a Red Herring reporter, and even the nascent vlogging space is in full-blown talent war mode. What was foreboden three years ago is commonplace today.

Talented people's time in our society is primarily engaged with money. As a result we are doubling the staff of DownloadSquad and we've increased the rate we are paying our bloggers to $10 a post on that blog (much more for features). As a result I'm sure our traffic will double over the next three months--in fact I will guarantee that it will happen. Money does change everything.

Talent wins, and talent needs to get paid. I love paying talented people so they can sleep well at night doing what they love. That's my biggest joy in business: gettin' people paid.

Before launching the new Netscape I realized that Reddit, NewsVine, Delicious, and DIGG were all driven by a small number of highly-active users. I wrote a blog post about what drives these folks to do an hour to three hours a day of work for these sites which are not paying them for their time. In other words, they are volunteering their services. The response most of these folks gave back to me were that they enjoyed sharing the links they found and that they got satisfaction out of being an "expert" or "leader" in their communities.

Excellent... excellent (say that in a Darth Vadar/Darth Calacanis voice for extra impact).

That is exactly what bloggers told Brian and I three years ago when we started. Given that, I have an offer to the top 50 users on any of the major social news/bookmarking sites:

We will pay you $1,000 a month for your "social bookmarking" rights. Put in at least 150 stories a month and we'll give you $12,000 a year. (note: most of these folks put in 250-400 stories a month, so that 150 baseline is just that--a baseline).

Now, this offer is going to get a big response I know, so we're going to have to limit to a dozen or so folks. However, I'm absolutely convinced that the top 20 people on DIGG, Delicious, Flickr, MySpace, and Reddit are worth $1,000 a month and if we're the first folks to pay them that is fine with me--we will take the risk and the arrows from the folks who think we're corrupting the community process (is there anyone out there who thinks this any more?!).

We're gonna identify this people in our system as "Netscape Navigators," and they will work with our full-time "Netscape Anchors" to build a community. I see a day when we have the eight full-time Anchors working with two dozen Navigators to keep the site fresh and clean (hmm... I think I need a better choice of words here).

The concept of "free" content producers, which I think WIRED called crowdsourcing, is going to be a short-lived joke. A loophole in the content business that will be closed by savvy startups which identify the top 5% of the audience and buy their time.

If we're (DIGG, Delicious, Flickr, Reddit, MySpace, Netscape, etc) are going to make businesses out of this space we should share the wealth.

As we say in Brooklyn: everyone's gotta eat.*

* Note: Everything I know about business I learned in Brooklyn. I learned this one from my father while at his restaurant when I asked him why we didn't just buy our own jukebox and instead split the money with the "goodfella" who brought the machine in, changed the records every month, and split the quarters with us. "Everyone's gotta eat" he told me. It wasn't the last time I would hear that expression, and there are many variations of it that the 'fellas in the neighborhood would use. "Can I get a taste?" or "I need a taste" were two of many variations on the theme. This expression was a the humble--or demanding--way of saying you wanted a cut of the action (money).

Note 2: One of my favorite Knicks of all time, Latrell Sprewell, famously used a variation of this saying by stating that he had a family to feed when turning down a $10M+ deal from the Timberwolves. They wouldn't give him a better deal and he sat out last year--perhaps his final quality year as a basketball player. This is an important lesson for the talent out there: your first offer is usually your best offer. I'm just saying... :-)

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.

The "war" between DIGG and Netscape rages on...although not between Kevin Rose and I! The users on DIGG and Netscape are fighting it out... it's kind of funny in fact. The 94% male, techie audience on DIGG vs. the mass audience on Netscape.

Anway, as everyone knows Kevin and I are, in fact, friends. We IM and email often, and we actually like and respect each other. I'm also good friends with Marc Andreessen who founded Netscape and who is an investor in DIGG (small world huh?).

Anyway, here are a couple of threads where you can see the debate:

http://digg.com/tech_news/New_DIGG_Three_ads_above_the_fold!

http://news.beta.netscape.com/story/2006/06/26/digg-30-disappoints/

It's kind of funny.... all this press and attention. You would almost think we planned it. ;-)

I guess the 3.0 in DIGG 3.0 means three ads above the fold! We got our butts kicked by DIGG users for having two ads above the fold--I wonder if they'll slam Kevin Rose for putting *three* ads above the fold--OUCH!!!

Note: The TOS (top of service) has only one advertisement, a leaderboard. Smart move... go light on top level ads, make it back on the second level. We're doing something similar (this is the Google School of Design btw).

Update: They are also doing graphical ads... not just text for those folks who said they don't do graphical ads. See first shot below.

We've been waiting for a week til we had enough data in the New Netscape to release this feature and ***WOW*** does it work!

Our amazing tech team has built a "Users who voted for this story also voted for these stories..." feature. This is an important feature for two important reasons:

1. You get to *discover* new stories on an axis other than key words: liked midedness.
2. You get to *discover* new friends.

Here is an example... members who voted for this music story also voted for the ones below.

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!

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