ChasNote

Last year Netscape relaunched their portal with a user-voting feature, just like Digg! But, alas, building a community requires more than a button to allow user voting. From WSJ:

“Some apparently thought Digg’s appeal could be imported. Executives at Netscape.com, the home page for the once-popular browser, last summer redesigned their site to make it Digg-like. Netscape.com had been a ‘traditional’ Web portal, displaying news and feature stories selected by editors. Now, Netscape readers were going to be submitting and voting on stories themselves.

“But Netscape customers apparently were happy to let editors do those chores for them. When they voted, it was with their feet. Since September, when Netscape made other changes that affected readership, traffic at Netscape.com has dropped 28%, reports Hitwise.”