Netscape today try to go Web 2.0. Which I guess is a smart move, for me at least Netscape is almost the definition of Web 1.0, so they do need to update. They are doing this by launching a Digg style user voted news site. Which is a very Web 2.0 thing to do, in fact there are loads of Digg clones out there already, and when Digg lauches its new content areas these two services will directly compete. But put simply Netscape don’t know what they are doing.

I wanted to get into this new Netscape service (which is in Beta at the moment) to give it a quick whirl, expecting that it would be show signs of never quite leaving Web 1.0. So I clicked “Sign Up” and I am presented with this form. The space immediately to the right of the dashed line on the far left is totally blank, as you can see in this extended screenshot. I instantly notice that it is a pretty long form, and I am less inclined to bother signing up. Why they need my birth date and postal code I am not sure. But as you can also see they have missed out number 2. I don’t know if this is just pure rushing by these web designers or if the number 2 block just doesn’t show up in Gecko browsers. Either way it is pretty shocking. Netscape as supposed to be highly professional.

Anyway, I fill in this form and hit the complete registration button which is for no reason in particular surrounded by an orange border. And I wait. Finally the screen changes and I am presented with this. A page that says absolutely nothing. I try again, but it doesn’t work. Hopeful that the registration may have gone through anyway I tried to sign in with the account I had been trying to open, but that failed also.

So I haven’t been able to use the service. But from the outside bits that I have seen it seems obvious that it isn’t going anywhere. TechCrunch comments that:

According to statistics provided by AOL, Netscape serves a whopping 811 million monthly page views - far more than Digg today.

I can’t help but wonder how many of those are stacked up by users that have Netscape set as their homepage by default and have never sought to change it.