Social Media

Netscape's Fatal Flaw

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Every social news site has its strong points and its weak points. Netscape, while manages to get many things right, has a fatal flaw that may eventually destroy the community aspect of the site if they keep allowing people to abuse it without any consequences.
I have written before about Netscape’s site-mail feature and how it is being abused to the point where it has become the main (easiest) way to get on the site’s front-page, and the steps Netscape took to curtail the abusing activity. While their steps worked to an extent, the problem of spamming community members to get votes is still pervasive. Looking at 50 site-mail messages that I received in the past 10 days, I can see that over 80% of the stories that are blindly mass-site-mailed to people end up on Netscape’s front-page.
This is problematic for two reasons:
1. If the main way of reaching the site’s front-page becomes the mechanical procedure of submitting and site-mail-spamming, it completely defeats the ‘social’ aspect of a socially driven news site.
2. Furthermore, the more difficult it becomes to naturally reach the front-page (if all the front-page slots are occupied by site-mailed stories), the more it discourages participation from new users and prevents the site from having a strong and active community.
I personally believe that unless content is naturally allowed to collect votes and rise to the front-page, the site isn’t taking advantage of the ‘wisdom of crowds’, which is one of the main attractions to socially driven news sites. I’m not worried about my inbox being inundated anymore, rather what I’m worried about is how Netscape’s site-mail feature has become a playground for multitude of voting rings.

Muhammad Saleem

Muhammad Saleem

Speak your mind!

  1. It used to be that the links were not clickable in the site mail. While this wouldn’t stop mass mailing, it would make people less likely to “click and vote”.

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