Speaking of Digg, they have v3.0 launching “early” Monday morning and had a launch party in San Francisco [pictures here]. The next incarnation of Digg will open up to a more diverse number of categories leaving the tech geek niche. And what about Digg-like Netscape beta which launched a week ago? Guess what the top story is as of this writing? The pending Digg v3.0 launch. I’m not sure at what point this joke becomes real old, or if it’s already there, but it seems strange visiting the new Netscape and seeing stories about the new Digg.

I’m curious what will happen to Netscape once the Digg crowd stops providing (most) the activity. Most Netscape stories are getting very few votes from what I’ve been seeing. We won’t really know until/if they finally open the floodgates to the main Netscape.com site for the digg-type format. I would say on the whole, though, that their first week has been underwhelming.

This whole digg vs. Netscape competition does trim some steam from the weathered digg vs. slashdot comparisons. I’m sure it’s not a great week for Slashdot editor Rob Malda considering he was picked as one of the 10 That Don’t Matter by Businessweek:

Malda knows his subject, and he’s a good editor, but in the end, he’s just no match for the power of the multitudes.

Malda shares some interesting company in Businessweek’s list: Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Ken Kutargi from Sony, Reed Hastings from Netflix and Jeffrey Citron from the (so far) abominable Vonage IPO which closed at $8.65, almost half the launch price.

Getting back to Netscape, more impressive this past week has been that they are actively working the beta and making changes based on feedback and results pretty rapidly. For example, they axed the annoying ads in the middle of the listing and now have their own bookmarklet (although they should have launched the beta with one). Their member tracker indicates they have crossed the 3,000 member mark. That would be pretty good for just about any new site that didn’t have the Netscape guns behind it. Have to wonder how many of those 3,000+ are from Digg.

Update 6:21am PST: Digg stats via TalkCrunch podcast with Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson: adding 1,000-1,500 new users a day. 1,500-2,000 new stories submitted a day and 40-60 get voted up to the front page. Digg is doing 8.5 million unique visitors a month.

• Slashdot Firehose brings readers into story selection process a la digg
• Digg 3 checkmates Netscape?
• BusinessWeek and Slashdot get context wrong, writes Zawodny
• New Netscape.com righteous or ripoff of Digg debate begins
• Digg receives $2.8 million in VC funding
• Kottke’s Digg vs. Slashdot traffic comparison