Netscape wants its gatekeepers back

A little over a year ago, Stephan Colbert recently defined wikiality as

A reality where, if enough people agree with a notion, it becomes the truth.

That seems pretty close to Netscape’s opinion of social news, if you read their recent statement closing shop at their own social news portal (emphasis mine):

Many of you may remember that Netscape.com used to be much different than it is today. In fact, it used to contain more mainstream news before we shifted to the social news site you see now.

We received some feedback that people really do associate the Netscape brand with providing mainstream news that is editorially controlled. In fact, we specifically heard that our users do have a desire for a social news experience, but simply didn’t expect to find it on Netscape.com.

Now, to be fair, they did indicate that they plan to build a new social news site, but the bottom line is that by using words like “mainstream” and “traditional,” Netscape is saying that they just didn’t like the stories people were voting on (As a sidenote, I found this story on Digg, ironically enough).

Sound like a tough allegation? Follow me below the fold…

Looking at Netscape’s site, it doesn’t look like they were very comfortable being a social news site in the first place. The second question of their FAQ is, “Is there any oversight of Netscape, or is this a complete free for all?” The question is also one of only three excerpted on the right sidebar of their blog (see pullout). The homepage features stories recommended by their editors, and some stories feature editorial comments and corrections, rather than being allowed to stand on their own merits. And the front page is designed so that the stories come from the top fifteen most popular catagories populate the front page, forcing a diversity of stories even if users favor some catagories over others. It’s minor stuff, but it contributes to a general distrust of users that leads to statements about “traditional” and “mainstream.” But why would Netscape make this move?

First, let’s all put on our tinfoil hats and wonder if they’re moving away from social news because users voted up stories that were critical of Netscape, its parent company, AOL, or its grandparent company, Time-Warner. While there are some stories that are not flattering to Netscape and its parents, they don’t constitute a significant number of posts, nor does there appear to be evidence of censorship. As a matter of fact, there’s a post on their first day entitled, “AOL Copies Digg” that remains up, even with the negative comments and the tags, “evil, aol, http://www.netscape.com/tag/digg.” That said, I do find the editorial rebuttals that appear in this and several other AOL-related posts to be more than a little tacky – I’ve never seen the same on Digg or elsewhere.

But I don’t believe that these few posts had a significant effect on the choice to abandon social news. Rather, I would argue that the chain of media ownership has simply led them to conclude that a social news site directly competes with the rest of Time Warner’s properties. Should a company that owns CNN, Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, People, Entertainment Weekly, and the influential Progressive Farmer encourage the growth of citizen editors who make their own decision on what’s newsworthy, a decision that may be significantly different, and critical of, the choices made by traditional journalists and editors?

In a world where news online can be accessed a la carte 24-7, the role of gatekeeper is becoming less and less relevant. Sure, when the editor is a show of hands, it doesn’t prioritize the kind of news that focus groups would prefer we consume. But in a way it puts the onus on the consumer to pick a site with like-minded readers to find the news that interests them. It’s a form of wikiality, to be sure – StumbleUpon is almost built to be a network of goofy stuff. But the growing popularity of social news means that much as Time-Warner et al might want to resist it, the age of “watch what we tell you” is over, and social news is a part of the user-generated future.

All of this goes to show that non-profit organizations might want to think about their resource allocation when it comes to getting out their story. Does it make sense to have a huge PR shop pumping out press releases when you don’t have Digg This buttons on your pages? How much time do you spend shopping your successes to the dead-tree press when you could be reformatting them to be more likely to appear on Reddit? And how many of your employees are social news users, who could be asked on occasion to rate up an important story or campaign (from off-site, of course – Digg’s admins are notorious for being able to spot an astroturf effort, and a bunch of hits coming from users with no history who live at a single IP has a big bullsye on it)?

So while it may look like Netscape’s move is a blow to social news, I read it more as an acknowledgement by Time-Warner that they should stop cannibalizing the rest of their empire. There’s still a need for professional reporters in the new world – but is there room for editors? Share your thoughts in the comments. And of course, if you enjoyed this or any of our other fine posts, be your own editor and click on one of the social news or bookmarking options directly below.