Once Netscape was THE browser. We even remember when people said that Netscape was THE search engine they used. Now, the Netscape.com web site, formally a general purpose portal (part of AOL), has been transformed into a news site that, according to Elinor Mills at News.com, will allow users to, “select suggest and rank top stories” (think social bookmarking ala digg, del.icio.us, etc.) and then have editors (they’ll be called anchors) fact check, offer comments, expand the story, etc. As we post this item, the site is not live (at least we can’t see it) so it’s difficult to add more. Although News.com reports the site is to go live today, we just noticed a banner on Netscape.com (upper right side of page) that said the new site was coming in 16 days. Why? The beta launches today. The AP reports the site itself will go live on July 1st. Sounds interesting. Some questions that quickly come to mind and will likely be answered once the site goes live.

• What will the scope and size (coverage) of the database be? What will users be choosing from?
• Who will determine what blogs, feeds, news sources are part of the database?
• What tools beyond the phone will the editors use to fact check?
• Will the fact checkers have backgrounds in research, fact checking?
• Will researchers, fact checkers, reporters, and librarians from other Time Warner properties be involved?
• Will they have access to databases not available on the web? For example, would a fact checker be able to get quick access to a company history from a Gale database or an official industry ranking of an industry from TableBase?
• Will a sports story be fact checked using an authoritative fee-based service?
• Will a mobile version of the site and service be available?
• Some articles will be presented in frames according to the AP report.
• Will Netscape.com use only US sources?
• Will a mainstream audience participate (as opposed to only read) a service like this? Will grandma be voting on stories sometime soon?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 1:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.