Netscape: The Calacanis Effect

Calacanis' response to an Inquirer article basically reporting the same thing. His points were simple, Netscape.com had been losing traffic far before he came there, which is evident in the included graph. He was able to actually stop that loss and keep a steady state for a time which is actually an improvement. Further traffic loss occurred in August when Netscape e-mail users were moved from Netscape.com to AOL. They were not so much of a loss as a transfer.

I'm interested in seeing if AOL sticks to Calacanis' Netscape strategy, or if they scrap it all and start over again. If they do stick to the Digg model, It'll be interested to see if they can further turn the trend and start gaining traffic.

I'm not going to really get involved in a 'why Jason left' and 'what are Netscape's numbers' gossip and speculation because it's generally a waste of time, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that those are not Netscape's internal traffic stats that Denton claims to be using.

I dunno, as I'm still not a fan of Calcanis or his methods of doing business, I find that much of the speculation about his departure is attributable to his own (arguably) unscrupulous reputation.

People who spend all their time "not" making friends shouldn't be surprised to find out that they don't have any.