Don’t count out Propeller yet.

AOL’s stake in social news, previously known as Netscape, has just crossed through the 400,000 registered users mark (as spotted on the realtime user tracker):

Valleywag certainly got me curious about Propeller again after reports of Wil Wheaton seeing the next Propeller version.
Since everyone calls Propeller a Digg clone, here’s a short timeline of where Digg stands with its user base:

8/06 - 500,000
3/7/07 - 1 million
(If anyone’s got a link to a more recent reference to where Digg is at, put it in the comments and I’ll revise. My guesstimate is they are probably getting close to 2 million.)

Compare these community sizes to more recent niche social news site Sphinn, which has 5,759 registered users.

(show the math, you say? ok. Check the current users: 50 per page x 115 pages of users + 9 on last page = 5759).

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Breaking news - Propeller.com has officially been ported over from Netscape. Users going to Netscape.com will now be directed to the AOL / Netscape portal that has a similar look and feel as Yahoo:

For those wondering how the new Propeller will work differently from the old Netscape social news site, so far it appears to have kept user profiles, friends, stories, and the like intact. The only apparent changes are that the site is now branded with Propeller logos instead of Netscape:

Also, it appears that the Netscape team will be making the site more stable, spam free, and robust. As Tom Drapeau, Director of Netscape / Propeller writes on the Netscape blog:

“We do realize that there have been undue performance problems and a few technical glitches over the past few weeks. Let me apologize for this poor user experience, and assure you that we are hard at work in fixing these. We have also had more spam escape our filters lately, and I want to apologize for that as well, and give thanks to all of our great members who reported these stories as such.

Also, we are not happy to simply stand pat with our existing features. In the near future, we will be able to share information about our new social news platform, which we are extremely excited about. It will bring together the best of all worlds: a world class design team, an advanced website platform, and a host of new and interesting ways to enjoy social news.

Some encouraging news from Netscape social news. When Netscape first put rumors to bed about Netscape shutting down social news, announcing the move to propeller.com, the Propeller domain brought up nothing. Today, going to Propeller.com brings up the familiar Netscape.com. I’m glad to see things moving along, and look forward to Netscape’s next steps.

I was very pleased to see that Tom Drapeau, Director of Netscape has finally put the rumors to rest with a post earlier today on the Netscape blog:

The Netscape social news experience that you are currently using today will be migrated and revealed soon at http://www.propeller.com/. We’re working hard behind the scenes to ensure a smooth transition before we officially launch at this new destination.

Really, I couldn’t be happier. It would have been quite a shame to just simply throw away Netscape. Techcrunch still insists that Netscape social news, in any form, will be dead in 12 months, pointing that its success is at least in part due to type-in traffic. Netscape social news doesn’t need those training wheels anymore, having over 300,000 registered members, not to mention over 109 million monthly uniques. It has more traffic to its site than other popular social news sites such as Reddit, Newsvine, Slashdot, and Ma.gnolia.

Last month, I reported a response to TechCrunch’s uncited source that Netscape social news was going away. When a valid source could not be reported, many of us dismissed it.

I was wrong. Digg, you win.

Sadly to say, looks like Michael Arrington was right. The official Netscape blog has reported that the current Netscape site will be taken down. From the blog:

Visitors to Netscape.com will see a more traditional news experience very soon. Don’t worry, the social news site isn’t going away! We will keep you updated on where you will be able to find the social news site as we get closer to making the switch.

Netscape participants are up in arms. The current top story on Netscape.com is about this closure / move. So far, here are some reports from the Netscape anchors within the story comments:

More details will be forthcoming over the next couple of weeks, but the point to stress now is that the social news site is not disappearing. Yes, we will be moving to a new URL, and we will have a new name. But the accumulation of stories, tags, and comment threads will follow us to the new location. And of course we hope that many of our members will do the same. In the end it’s not the name that matters–it’s the community that makes or breaks a social news site.

User accounts, stories, and the like are said to remain preserved. Yes, it’s true that the current reports say that Netscape isn’t going away, and that it is only moving domains. Still, I think that it will take some time to recreate the community and many will leave.

Perhaps TechCrunch is correct this time. TechCrunch reports that Netscape may be moving over to the wow.com domain, of Compuserver former glory.

Only time will tell.