AOL To Get Back Into Social News Game With ‘Propeller’

Just over a month ago, we told you of AOL’s planned retirement of the social news structure of Netscape. Just a week ago, the website was officially removed for good. Yesterday, AOL announced its plans to enter the social news game once more.

I guess the company’s not giving up on its dream of profiting off a Digg clone quite yet.

I don’t know whether to call it a reinvention of the Calacanis model or simply a reinstitution of what was in place before (in other words, the Calacanis model, cut and re-pasted). AOL isn’t giving very much information on the subject. All they’ve given the press to nibble on is a new name: Propeller. Which, if you don’t mind my saying, sucks.

I suppose I can see where they got inspiration for the title. Users of social news sites do “propel” webpage forward, to the front page. It just doesn’t seem like something I can foresee many people getting into. But hey, we’ll see how it goes. I just hope they don’t get thematic with it, literally replacing the labels on its vote buttons with “Propel,” because, well, that’d be absolutely ridiculous. AOL’s better off advising the Netscape team – or Propeller team, if that’s the arrangement current in place – to stick with the original labels where such site essentials are concerned.

Not much more to say about it right now. We have to wait for the official launch (Propeller.com turns up nothing at present) before giving the site good or bad marks. I presume a good deal of noise will be made about it throughout the blogosphere when that day comes, with negatives undoubtedly claiming a majority over positives. Presumably, it’ll be thought of as another play on the Digg phenomenon and eventually have a nice small share of the market reserved in Second Class Citizen Land, much like Netscape.com had when it was still active. Nothing more, nothing less.

Nonetheless, I’m holding a bit of hope for a truly surprising release, worthy of oodles and oodles of commendation. But I’m not betting on that being the case, because at the end of the day, it’s AOL working the strings on this release, and I can’t for the life of me imagine they’ll put out something engineered to above-average standards.

What’s your forecast for the Propeller project?