Beginner's Guide to Netscape
In an effort to help our readers completely understand the various social media sites out there, we have decided to do a series of 'beginner's guides' dedicated to teaching you how to get your feet wet. Following in the footsteps of Neil's beginner's guide to Digg and based on the same model, here's your beginner's guide to Netscape.
History
Before the June of last year, Netscape was just like any other web portal and offered many of the same features. But after seeing their user-base plummet, coinciding with the rise of socially driven news sites, Netscape redesigned their site to adhere to the social web model and even brought forth some unique elements. With over 5,000,000 unique monthly visitors, and over 230,000 users, Netscape is currently the second largest socially driven news site, and second only to Digg.
Overview
There are four main ways to participate on Netscape. You can read the content, vote or sink content based on your likes or dislikes, comment on articles, and submit content yourself.
Reading
There are three ways to read Netscape on the site. The first is to look at the box on the very top of the site that reads 'Netscape Anchors Recommend...'. This box contains the breaking news, or otherwise important or interesting stories that the Netscape Anchors have hand picked for the community. If you're in a hurry and want to get the pulse of what's going on at Netscape, this is a good place to start.
Right under that box are all the other stories that have the most votes and comments from all across Netscape. Netscape is designed so that the front-page showcases a few of the most popular stories from some of the most active channels on the site. For more stories on any topic of interest, you should select a specific channel from the box labeled 'Channels' right below the 'Netscape Reports' graphic.
The most efficient way to read the site, if you want to avoid the clutter and the advertisements that you are bombarded with when you reach the homepage, is to subscribe to the front-page RSS feed, or a specific channel's RSS feed.
Submitting
Submitting content to Netscape is incredibly easy. Just find a story that you think the rest of the community will enjoy, enter the url, title, and article summary for what you're submitting, choose an appropriate channel to submit to, and assign some relevant tags for your submission. Click 'Check My Story' and once Netscape makes sure that your story is okay to submit (i.e. is not a duplicate of another submission) you're ready to go.
Voting
There is a reason that the new Netscape is referred to as a socially driven news site. The community not only submits the content, but decides what is important and thus displayed on the front-page of the site. You express approval of the content that you like by voting for it and your disapproval of the content you don't like by clicking the 'Sink' button.
Commenting
Commenting is one of the most essential parts of the social news process. This is where the community actually generates content. Once an article has been submitted and voted on, feel free to put in your two cents and join the thousands of other members on the site in a heated debate.
Features
Netscape has several interesting features. Some are similar to the ones other websites have while some are unique to Netscape.
Netscape Reports
Netscape Reports is where the Netscape Anchors do all their original reporting. This is not just content submitted by them, but original commentary, reviews, and interviews conducted by the Netscape team.
Site-Mail
Netscape site-mail started as an interesting way for the members of the social news site's community members to communicate with each other and share interesting information amongst themselves. Unfortunately the feature has become more a tool for spammers than anything else.
By clicking on the link shown above, you can go to your site-mail message center. Where you can check messages that other members have sent you, and can send them messages as well.
See also:
Getting on Netscape's Homepage
Netscape's Anti-Spam Efforts are Working
Netscape Tracker
Netscape Tracker is a tool that you can use to see snippets of activity as it occurs on the site. While the name of the feature implies that the activity is displayed in real-time, in actuality the tracker refreshes only once every 45 seconds. While at the tracker page, you can see the following kinds of activity: story submissions, video submissions, votes, comments, new member signups, sinks, and anchor commentary.
User Statistics
Netscape offers a wide array of usage statistics for every community member. You can see the stories you have submitted, the ones that were voted to the site's homepage, the stories you voted on, and commented on. Additionally, you can also see your site rankings based on your recent participation, the number of stories you have voted on, and the number of votes your stories and comments have gotten.
Friends
Netscape possibly has one of the most rhobust friends features of the big three social news sites. In addition to the usual friends adding and tracking features that most sites offer. You can add friends on the basis of who a particular user is friends with, and add members that have similar voting and comment-rating habits as yourself.
Netscape API
While Netscape does have an API, it is a little restrictive at this point as it allows you to integrate Netscape with other sites but doesn't give out information based on which developers would be able to build new tools.
Summary
Netscape got a lot of negative press because it got labeled as a Digg-clone. While in many cases the sites are incredibly similar, there are some big differences between the two as well. This biggest difference of course being the user bases of the two sites. While I wouldn't discount an over lap between the two, Digg has an audience that is much more interested in science and technology, and Netscape attracts people who are interested in the latest news and political issues. So if your interests are in line with the rest of the 5,000,000 people who visit Netscape every month, give it a try and who knows, you may be America's next top Netscape user.
Additional Resources:
An In-Depth Look at Netscape vs. Digg (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
**Disclaimer: I am a Netscape Navigator.
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Trackbacks (1)
- Think Search Engines //, May 9, 2007
“Netscape Explained - Social Networking Part 9” — In an effort to shed more light on the Social Networking arena, we continue our series?Ǭ†with Netscape. In this post I just point?Ǭ†out this?Ǭ†excellent article explaining?Ǭ†the?Ǭ†new Netscape written by?Ǭ†Muhammad Saleem of Pronet Advertising. There is no...
Reader Comments (8)
- Joshua Dorkin, May 8, 2007
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Wow! That is one thorough post. Nice work. It will certainly come in handy for the beginners out there.
- Muhammad Saleem, May 8, 2007
- Tanner Godarzi, May 8, 2007
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Muhammad, thanks so much for this post. I've been out of the Netscape loop for quite a while and have been wanting to get back in.
- Maki, May 9, 2007
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Nice post, Muhammad. You just wrote the post I've been planning to write for some time.
Any plans for an 'advanced users' guide to Netscape? Your insights as a Navigator would be valuable.
- Chris Hemphill, May 9, 2007
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Any suggestions on how to use search for duplicates, or should you just use the built in duplicate checker?
- Matt Ellsworth, May 9, 2007
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Great post - thanks for that! I know that a lot of new people will certainly appreciate this.
- Edwin, May 9, 2007
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Excellent article, I'm going to submit one of my post to Netscape right now, lets see how it does. :)
- Andres Gomez, May 13, 2007
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My opinion about Netscape is not the best, because according to my experience in 2 months the traffic that it generates toward my website is null. But the positioning that Netscape reaches in Google, thanks to my content is very high. Conclusion, Netscape takes advantage of my content to exploit it in their own profit. Please don't submit your content to Netscape... use Digg or/and other social networks.
