TechCrunch reported that Propeller.com has been doing better than Netscape.com since AOL took the Netscape domain away from the social news team and turned it back into a portal.
The conclusions they found included:
- the audience must have been really loyal to the social news site
- that Jason and the entire Netscape social news team were vindicated for their efforts
- AOL’s latest move destroyed the Netscape brand by another 50%
I think they’re missing the story here. The real conclusion a savvy reporter should draw is that the Propeller team needs to be careful to stay under the radar or a middle manager at AOL is going to take their new domain name away. Just look at all the built-in traffic it has!
I’m betting that the social news site will live at either Compuserve.com or Switched.com by Christmas and Propeller.com will be an instant messenger client.
Brian Alvey 