Netscape Needs to Find its Calling

I was too tied up last week to blog about the whole Netscape debacle. Kevin Rose from digg weighs in on it here. I have, however, discussed it with the media on a couple of occasions so I thought this would be a good time to share my thoughts.

Overall, I do think Jason Calacanis' attempt to court the influential residents of his competitors' sites with cash, while noble, screams desperation for Netscape and appears short-sighted. My reaction today is consistent with how I felt initially: AOL is not giving Jason the time he needs to build a community and they are impatient. Such impatience leads to poor business decisions.

Nevertheless, I do think the new Netscape will succeed, but it's going to take time. Although digg's rise is nothing short of remarkable, it was spurred by the community. The digg team didn't grow it. The people did. What Kevin and crew did was create the means for the community to do its thing. In this case that "thing" was a desire to coalesce around a common passion - technology - in a unique way that was simple, yet engaging.

Netscape needs to find its calling. What will it be - politics, health? Who knows? The community will tell us. Once it appears, Jason and the Netscape team then should quickly build new enhancements that help the audience share content in that vertical in a way they can't anywhere else. Once this happens, Netscape will become a successful site. But paying people to come over is not the answer. That's like bringing Dom Perignon to a frat house party. It might look good, but it's out of place.

Technorati Tags: digg, Jason Calacanis, Kevin Rose, memediggers, Netscape, AOL