Netscape.com Relaunched As News Site

Netscape, backed by AOL will relaunch Netscape.com, transforming it from a general portal into a news site, something on the lines of the popular Digg.com. The new avatar will be called beta.netscape.com and will enable users to recommend and rank their choices for news stories as well as access stories selected by the news editor. Netscape claims that beta.netscape.com will have more transparency compared to other sites because the readers will now be able to track other reader activity, see who submitted the articles, check comments as well as votes on the stories. The site also contains profiles of anchors and frequent reader contributors, along with a list of popular tags and channels. The refurbished site will employ editors to fact check news stories and provide write ups for background and additional context. The eight full time ‘Anchors’ and 15 part time specialists will be in charge of 30 different categories, ranging from food and travel to technology. Moreover, these anchors will also appear on live video and chat with readers about stories. This comes as a major challenge to community moderated news sites like Digg.com, reddit.com, newsvine.com which don’t have audio-visual support. Anyone with a user ID from Netscape.com, AOL, or AIM will be able to contribute to the site that will officially release on July 1 and the test version will be available for review on June 15.