Propeller.com
Encyclopedia
Social news
A social news website is a type of website that features user-submitted stories that are ranked based on popularity.-Slashdot:Slashdot, started in 1997, was one of the first social news websites. It focuses mainly on science and technology related news. Users can submit stories, and the editors...
aggregator operated by AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
-Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
. It was similar to Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
; users could vote for which stories are to be included on the front page and could comment on them as well. As of October 1, 2010, Propeller will no longer be active.
The Chief Architect of the site was Brian Alvey
Brian Alvey
Brian Alvey along with Jason Calacanis co-founded the publishing company Weblogs, Inc., home to such blogs as Engadget, Autoblog, Joystiq, TV Squad, Cinematical and Slashfood. Time Warner's America Online purchased Weblogs, Inc. in October 2005. In November 2006, AOL also purchased the blogging...
and the lead developer of the site was Alex Rudloff. It was maintained by Weblogs, Inc.
Weblogs, Inc.
Weblogs, Inc. is a blog network of about 90 blogs, covering a variety of subjects, from computers and gaming . Roughly half of these blogs are regularly updated and maintained. Weblogs, Inc. was founded in September 2003.-History:...
CEO Jason Calacanis
Jason Calacanis
Jason McCabe Calacanis is an American Internet entrepreneur and blogger. His first company was part of the dot-com era in New York, and his second venture, Weblogs, Inc., capitalized on the growth of blogs before being sold to AOL....
until he left AOL in November 2006. The current director is Tom Drapeau. Netscape's market share had been declining for over a year at the time of the change-over.
Propeller was hosted on the Netscape.com domain from June 2006 to September 2007 when it was replaced by the AOL Netscape generic portal.
The previous version of Propeller was released to mixed reactions. Some users liked that they had more participation ability while others found the pages to be harder to navigate and not as structured. Soon after the release of the new site, a story entitled "Netscape's Blunder" was the top rated story.
Anchors
Propeller has several "anchors", currently led by James MarcusJames Marcus
James Marcus is an English actor.He is best known for his performance as Georgie, one of the droogs in Stanley Kubrick's controversial film A Clockwork Orange . Before becoming an apprentice printer, he spent the majority of his teenage life performing gigs...
, who work on maintaining the site and featuring stories in the "anchor picks" box on the home page. This creates a slightly different environment from Digg, as Digg's homepage rankings are based solely on user votes, where Propeller's are based on both. The rest of the team includes Alexia Prichard.
Scouts
Propeller also pays a small number of power users called Scouts. This group is run by Ryan Budke and made up of Weblogs, Inc.Weblogs, Inc.
Weblogs, Inc. is a blog network of about 90 blogs, covering a variety of subjects, from computers and gaming . Roughly half of these blogs are regularly updated and maintained. Weblogs, Inc. was founded in September 2003.-History:...
bloggers, Propeller power users and celebrities, including Wil Wheaton
Wil Wheaton
Richard William "Wil" Wheaton III is an American actor and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie Lachance in the film Stand by Me and Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers...
. Other scouts include bloggers such as Fedquip Angry Ken, Henry Wang, Digidave TweekerChick and Corey Spring. These users were called Navigators until the relaunch of the Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared...
browser, at which point the name was changed to avoid confusion.