Propeller: A rotating device, with two or more blades, that acts as a screw in propelling a vessel. Now we can add to that definition the less-than-successful Digg clone that is hosted at Netscape.com. According to the Netscape Blog, the Netscape “social news experience” will be migrated and revealed at http://www.propeller.com.
The Netscape browser saw great success through the years, at one point holding as much as 85% of the browser usage share. However, the Netscape browser now holds less than 1% of the user share. After being purchased by AOL, the Netscape.com domain name was a generic web portal including customized information tied to AOL accounts. Starting in June of last year, the Netscape.com page became a social news page very similar to Digg. Many Digg users were even paid to submit stories to the Netscape service.
The Netscape.com domain name is going to receive a new face lift with the move of the social news service. The domain name will once again host an AOL branded web portal page available now at http://netscape.aol.com. Most likely, AOL is trying to take advantage of the large amount of traffic still hitting the Netscape.com domain name. Amazingly, AOL has not taken advantage of the traffic surrounding this announcement and hasn’t even created a holding page at the Propeller.com domain.
More Commentary: DownloadSquad, SearchEngineLand, and PaidContent.org.
