Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Propeller http://pulse2.com Sun, 27 May 2012 18:16:46 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Propeller.com Shuts Down http://pulse2.com/2010/09/26/propeller-com-shuts-down/ http://pulse2.com/2010/09/26/propeller-com-shuts-down/#comments Sun, 26 Sep 2010 21:03:08 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/?p=35789 Continue reading →]]>
Propeller.com is a social media link-sharing website that is similar to Digg.com and Reddit.com. Somebody submits a story and if it gains enough popularity, that story hits the homepage. Propeller.com was created out of an experiment by AOL subsidiary Netscape.

The Propeller.com project was headed by Weblogs Inc. co-founder Jason Calacanis. After AOL bought out Weblogs, Calacanis started to head up Propeller.com. One of the reasons why Propeller.com did not take off is because of its terrible design.

Calacanis and Digg co-founder Kevin Rose had beef with each other after the creation of Propeller.com too. Supposedly Calacanis paid some of Digg’s top users to join Propeller and become just as influential on that service as well. But the two ended their quarrels after they met on a podcast show.

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]]> http://pulse2.com/2010/09/26/propeller-com-shuts-down/feed/ 1 Digg Copycat, Propeller Now Wants You To “Prop It” http://pulse2.com/2008/07/22/digg-copy-cat-propeller-now-wants-you-to-prop-it/ http://pulse2.com/2008/07/22/digg-copy-cat-propeller-now-wants-you-to-prop-it/#comments Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:01:18 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/?p=4004 Continue reading →]]>
Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) subsidiary and one of the biggest Digg copycats that I have seen thus far, Propeller has relaunched into a lamer version than it’s 1.0 version.  When the site relaunched this morning, Propeller got rid of the Digg-like voting scheme, but the site is now telling their users to “Prop It,” also known as voting for stories to make it to the homepage.  The site is now using a scale of 1-10 for their stories.

Members of the new Propeller can create groups too.  Some of the most recently created groups are Firefox, Offbeat, Britney Spears, StumbleUpon, Jovial’s Group, Make Money Online, google, Organization, 90210, and Autos. 

Propeller categories include Arts/Entertainment, Business/Finance, Family, Humor, News, Science/Technology, Sports, and Style.  When a story makes it to the homepage of Propeller, they appear on the homepages of AOL and AOL News too. 

The biggest flaw that the new Propeller has right now is that they are giving their community too much power.  Spammers will be having a party with that ability.  The new Propeller site is pretty ugly too.  Simpletons using the site will not be able to tell what part of the site is a text ad and what part is actually content.  I really think that this site needs a major design overhaul.

The concept of Propeller first started on Netscape.com.  The idea was led by Jason Calacanis.  Calacanis hired several top users on Digg, Reddit, Flickr, and Newsvine to drive the top stories on Netscape.com.  Kevin Rose, founder of Digg called out Calacanis for doing this, but later the two ended their feud.  The voting idea was killed off of Netscape.com and then later moved to Propeller.   

Any thoughts on the new Propeller?  Comment away.

Related Links:
Propeller
TechCrunch

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