Re-inventing Netscape - News site of the future?
Saturday, June 7th, 2008
In an attempt to re-invent itself, Netscape is planning to launch itself as the news service of the future. While most sites cover today’s news, Netscape is planning to cover tomorrow’s news, looking 10 years out and letting people vote on where they think the future is headed.
Behind the covers this to me looks like a blog site with Ideastorm like functionality (www.ideastorm.com) and maybe some more advance idea market features, such as the ones offered by Spigit (www.spigit.com).
A friend of mine, Andy Fundinger, had the same idea as Netscape. He started the site memebox.com. Memebox covers futuristic news issues and lets people comment on these issues. So far Andy has received some comments on his blog.
My opinion is that if Netscape is able to seriously grain critical mass and build a pretty user friendly site that incorporates such innovation market tools into their site’s content, then they may transform they may have a compelling offering. People are curious to find out what the future holds and will for sure share their opinions. Maybe they can even find a way to allow people to financially bet on future waves.
The leader of this re-invention is Jason Calacanis, 35, general manager. He made his name as a publisher of the Silicon Alley Reporter magazine, entered the blogging world by starting a popular blog called Engaget.com and eventual sold webblogs.com to AOL for $25 million. It seems like Netscape has the right person for the job, the name recognition, and an interesting model.
I wish them best of luck on their re-invention. If they pull it off, this would be a good success story to document.