The storied Netscape.com will be revived again by AOL, and will relaunch soon as a Digg-like user-driven news/aggregation site with Jason Calacanis at the helm, sources have told paidContent.org. Some Netscape-Calacanis rumors first surfaced on SV gossip site Valleywag.
The original Netscape division has been more than decimated over the last few years and layoffs have been almost routine these last few months. The new Netscape.com will be headed by Calacanis, who came in through AOL’s acquisition of Weblogs Inc. Not clear what role Weblogs, Inc.’s blogs would play but both divisions would report in Calacanis, according to the sources. He already reports to Jim Bankoff, executive VP of Programming & Products, who would also oversee the Netscape.com changes.
Calacanis has been a big Digg fan and has written about it on his blog a few times. He has yet to respond to our query about these details, but said on his own blog in response to rumours: “There are no details to share right now, but if that changes I’ll certainly let you know.”
What is not clear is whether the new Netscape will stick to just technology news aggregation like Digg, or go the general consumer route. The latter seems the most likely.
It will be a tricky positioning since Netscape.com has seen its users diminish over the years ... it used to be a tech-heavy crowd, but now it has been eroded heavily and users consist mainly of the default-homepage-on-Netscape-browser types. Netscape also has some home-page branding relationships; for instance, the HP desktop came loaded with a browser default to an HP-branded version of Netscape.com. Not sure what would happen with those, either.