iSMOblog

With the competition getting tough with each passing day, even the social bookmarking sites have to keep up with this present trend. Propeller is no exception when we talk about giving your site a facelift or simply updating or re-launching them with new features. Previously Propeller was known to the world by the name of Netscape.com and was operated by AOL-Netscape.

The disparity

Talking about what different things this social bookmarking or social aggregator site had to offer to its users, well…this time even this website banked upon voting. Propeller, just like the very popular Digg, gives its users a chance to vote for their favorite stories, and thus, the story that gets the maximum votes is displayed on the very first page. However, the only major difference between Propeller and Digg is that the latter displays the stories clearly on voting done by its users. And in case of the former, voting plays a role to only a certain extent after which ‘Anchors’ or their team of people who maintain this site take over.

The disparity which Propeller exercises when it come to its users is that apart from ‘Anchors’, this social bookmarking website also has some power users known as ‘Scouts’ and earlier known as Navigators. This group includes Weblogs, celebrities, and other Netscape power users.

The unpleasant change

Its users had actually grown fond of Netscape.com. But when Propeller and its new features were introduced, this change was not welcomed by many of them. They complained about a number of things. Navigating through bookmarks became tough for them and understanding the structure of the website became a task in itself.

Most people also found themselves to be confused because according to them Propeller had copied various different things from a number of other websites. For instance, the voting feature was taken from Digg, the color schemes and the designs were a copy of Yahoo etc.

Moreover, the traffic to Propeller was much less as compared to Netscape.com and also, the link to the collections of tonnes of bookmarks etc. by people were broken, which indeed was very discouraging and extremely disheartening.

The silver lining

One new feature that Propeller has recently provided to its users, which was whole-heartedly welcomed by its users, was FAS or Friends’ Activity Sidebar. This extension allowed the users to view the activities of their friends i.e. keeping a check on them became much more easy. If anyone from your friends’ list added a new story, or commented on any or voted for any, then the Chad button, the big brother of the AOL’s chat mascot, will automatically get activated. So all you will need to do is to simply click on that respective button and view your friend’s latest activity. But please make sure that you are actually signed in to Propeller before hand.

Whatever it is, the conclusion remains that Netscape did a blunder by converting itself into Propeller. I speak for many other people who believe so. With many more social bookmarking options, there’s absolutely no reason why people should opt for this.