AOL’s new Netscape is a Digg-killer?

The beta version of the new Netscape portal really looks like another Digg-clone. Techcrunch calls it “the massive digg-killer” noting that Netscape serves a whopping 811 million monthly page views – far more than Digg today. With that amount of existing traffic, Jason Calacanis (the head huncho for WeblogsINC and Netscape), is pretty excited that they could build something great with the so-called meta-journalism (or social journalism).

The main difference between the new Netscape and Digg is that the latter is 100% pure user-driven while Calacanis’ new one will have editors or moderators. This means that the news that gets on top of the frontpage are then followed-up by the paid meta-journalists by way of verification, interviews and further research. Basically, the users themselves will be the ones nominating which stories should be covered more.

Digg CEO Jay Adelson responds to Netscape challenge:

Finally, we are very proud of the fact that there have been thousands of clones of digg. Keep them coming! (Time Warner is the first billion dollar company to do it, but bring it on. Surprised they went for the look and feel too, though.)

Oh wait, any new social news and bookmarking site now becomes a clone of Digg? Besides, was Digg ever an original idea? Digg was just a mix and match of the best features of del.icio.us and Slashdot. At least at Netscape, any attack/criticism on their site still gets the frontpage. Last time I heard, any submissions to Digg that’s anti-Digg are buried to oblivion.

I like Digg, don’t get me wrong, but if the owners talk as if their ideas are original and any other group or individual trying to improve it by either cloning or innovating on the idea are just a mess isn’t a nice way to welcome a new player.

[tags]netscape, digg, newsvine, reddit, delicious, social bookmarking[/tags]