Netscape.com Relaunches as a Community News Site ala Digg

Netscape.com launched a beta version of its user submitted news site today. Again, I’m not quite sure if I can entirely get myself to frequent sites like digg or Newsvine on a regular basis. I think the concept is a good one, but so far I don’t think anybody out there has nailed it. I still prefer the simplicity and zen-like approach of del.icio.us compared to what I view as more frantic approach of the diggs of the world.

Slashdot used to be a daily stop for me until I realized I could find most, if not more, of the same information from my growing collection of RSS feeds. Having humans aggregate news has pros and cons. On one hand, you get a lot more eyeballs scanning a lot more content than a single person could ever do. On the other hand, you tend to get the same small percentage of people that end up posting anything to these sites. So far, the feeling I get from these sites is it’s more about the people posting the stories gaining attention than it is actually about the stories themselves.

Netscape improves the digg experience by adding a layer of full and part-time editors to skim the stories that are voted high and choosing which get prominent display. They also have multiple channels of content in comparison to Digg’s concentration on technology related news.  Other than that I can’t say that I see much different, other than the abundance of ads, which are to be expected since AOL is in the business of making money and they put the king of making money from ads, Jason Calacanis, in charge of Netscape’s new direction. I think if anybody can manage to figure out this type of site it will be Calacanis.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to create an account today (glitches in the sign up process) so I don’t have much to say about the actual workings of the site. Since the site isn’t even 24 hours old yet, I hope the Netscape team plans to approach this with an agile approach and not be afraid to make any changes they need to try and get it right. Besides, how many more times can Netscape.com reinvent itself?