Digg vs. Netscape: A Review

There has been a lot of news lately of the Netscape clone of Digg, we have seen some battles between the founders of each site. Now I have to admit before I even begin this article that I am a big Digg supporter, and before thinking of doing this article I had not even wanted to give Netscape a chance, but I am going to be fair in this review.

The News

Quite possibly one of the most important aspects of this battle has been the news around these two websites and their makers, Kevin Rose of Digg and Jason Calacanis of Netscape. I mean even Leo Laporte decided to chime in and give his two cents on this issue.
Netscape, a website that started for a former web browser, has now cloned Digg and decided to get into the social bookmarking. This was not even the worst part of the news. A few weeks ago Calacanis offered top Digg users, along with other top users of social bookmarking sites, 1000 dollars a month to switch over to Netscape. Of course Kevin Rose responded to this offer in his blog, giving Digg’s stats to prove that the top 100 users of Digg only make up 1/3 of the front page content. He ended his entry saying, “Clone on.”

Calacanis decided to write back on his blog, proving the stats that Rose gave him were wrong, that Digg’s front page content is made up of 50% of the stories from the Top 100 users.

Other than the blog write ups from each sites CEO we’ve also seen another response from Jay Adelson, Digg’s co-founder, which Calacanis claims is more serious than Rose’s replies. Finally, the most recent development was from Kevin Rose’s podcast, diggnation, where him and his co-host Alex Albrecht discussed the issue. Albrecht brought up that way back in the day Netscape used to be homepage to a web browser and that most people who use Netscape, which ends up being more than Digg, are just people who can not change their home page from when Netscape was competition to Internet Explorer. Rose ended his podcast exclaiming, “Netscape Sucks.”

Despite the news these two sites are in competition with each other, which is something that happens on the web, so I have decided to compare them both and let you know the benefits and downfalls of each.

The Sites

Sign up and Login

Logging into Digg is too easy as soon as you enter the homepage of Digg you see on the left sidebar the Join Digg and Login options. Clicking on Login will open a small tab below, and with the help of ajax does this without having to open a new page.

Signing up for Netscape was a breeze as well, the sign up page can be found from the right sidebar and was a typical login process. I recieved my email from Netscape and was on my way in a matter of seconds.

Submitting

We all know how easy it is to submit stories to Digg, blogs now have social bookmarking tools to automatically add stories to Digg. You can submit a story to their site through signing in a clicking Submit a New Story. The process is easy you add the URL to the story, choose a topic; Gaming, Entertainment, Videos, Sports, World and Business, Science and Technology. Each topic is called a container and each container has sub-topics within it to become very specific. Then of course you just look over the story and submit it.

Submitting to Netscape is also pretty easy, you can click the Submit a Story button in the top right of the screen. From there the process if virtually the same as Digg, add your URL, the title and summary. Additionally, Netscape adds a tags option, which allows users to tag the story five times.

Profiles and Friends

One of the best aspects of Digg is the social part, its what makes the network successful. The profile area of Digg is a terrific part, you can add an avatar, your website, and view your Digg member ranking. However the best part of the profile area is the friends section, it allows you to watch what other users are Digging, Commenting on, Burying, etc.

Like Digg, Netscape offers a friend section to watch other users as well. Digg’s design helps visualize other users better than Netscape, but the idea is virtually the same. You can view what your friends are voting on and submitting, just like Digg, but finding what they are doing is the tough part.

Profiles are virtually the same as Digg as well, you can add a biography, avatar and you even have notifications. The best portion of Netscapes profile section if the ability to send messages.

Digging/Voting

This is probably the most simply thing you can do on Digg, collect your favorite stories. Digging requires being logged in and you can view your Dugg stories within the profile. Digging goes even deeper now when the newly updated version of Digg, you can now bury stories, for being incorrect, as well as Digg or bury comments on each story (which of course also requires logging in)

Again like Digg, Netscape allows you to Vote only when logged in and tracks the votes in your profile. This is the main part of each of the websites, the part that looks to be cloned by Netscape. Users can also decide if I comment is ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’, like Diggs burying system.

Features

Other than the main features of Digg, Submitting, Digging, and Commenting, Digg offers the Digg Spy to see in real-time what users are doing on the site. Digg also just released the Digg lab (review to come) which has two great visualization tools coded in a Flash environment.

Netscape has yet to offer quite services like the lab and Spy (though do not rule them out), one thing that I do like about Netscape is that they have a weather tool bar as a part of your profile.

Also Netscape has editors who select stories that make it to the top of the home page in several tabs. These editors called, ‘anchors’ choose the stories they seem to think are the most important. Even though the uses decide the stories underneath the editors top choices it steal does not feel as social as Digg.

…and the winner is…

Well I did not write this article to choose a winner and a loser, that should be for you to decide. To me I will always be an avid Digg user, they have done nothing but make improvements on their site and really embrace the Web 2.0 way of thinking.

Netscape has taken another’s original concept and tweaked it to their standards, which has yet to become a successful means. Having an original idea is what makes these ideas popular.

Digg has come up to challenges before, I remember when Newsvine was in private beta, how badly people wanted to get in and test out another social network, but in the end Digg came out on top.

You decide what is better for you, I can only hope this helps.