Mainstream Web Watch: Why Alltop Rocks
Back when the RSS aggregator web site Alltop launched in March of this year, we compared it to another daily start page favorite of ours at the time, OriginalSignal. Designed to bring RSS to the masses, Alltop, like both Original Signal and Popurls, provides categorized selections of feeds that make it easy to scan a lot of news on a particular subject. Since its launch, Alltop has been adding new categories at such a fast pace that it has now clearly blown away its competition in terms of quantity.
Since launch, Alltop has moved from simply being yet another start page, to a valuable resource for anyone wanting to research a certain subject or industry.
Not For You? That's OK
If you haven't checked out Alltop since its launch, it's probably because you fall more into the earlier adopter set - you were interested in taking a look at the shiny new site at the time, but you're still more than happy with your RSS reader and see no reason to switch. For early adopters like us, using a site like Alltop seems be like moving backwards. That's OK - that's as it should be.
We tend to use services like Google Reader or a configurable start page like Netvibes to read our feeds and this is fine for us. However, we're not necessarily representative of the masses. Not everyone wants to tweak and customize their own personal reader - they simply want a web destination where they can catch up on the news. Alltop can serve that purpose.
Nudge People Into RSS With Alltop
Alltop is also a great resource for getting people started with RSS. Next time you're trying to explain RSS to a friend, you can just send them a link to an Alltop page instead with a note saying "here's a great example of RSS in use." There are so many different subjects covered now, it's easy to find a page (or two or three) that your friend would enjoy, no matter their interests. They've got pages on countries (ex: Argentina), Sports (ex: Hockey), religions (ex: Muslim), activities (ex: crafts), educational resources (ex: personal finance), professions (ex: sales), events (ex: summer Olympics), and so many more.
When your friend returns to you after a while asking if they can add another web site to their Alltop page, you'll know that it's then time to move them into a more robust RSS solution like Netvibes, for example. Alltop was just their training wheels - now they're ready to ride.
Web 2.0 For Beginners
Not only can Alltop help people get into RSS, it's also useful for those just signing up with various Web 2.0 services for the first time. One of the problems with getting into the social web is that when you come so late the game, you don't even know where to begin. The early adopter set has been re-creating their friend graph on numerous sites for years - we know who's interesting to us, who our friends are, who we want to avoid, etc. A Web 2.0 beginner, on the other hand, signs up for a service like Twitter or FriendFeed, and is at a loss.
But that's where a service like Alltop is, again, very useful. When your friend asks you who to follow, you can point them to the Twitterati and Frienderati "starter packs." Here, they can pick and chose from those sites' more prominent users. (They even have the Utterati covered now - who knows what next? Identerati?)
Conclusion
Alltop may not be the most glamorous of today's web resources, but its extensive pages are great tools to nudge people towards the more complex apps we embrace today as both techies and social media enthusiasts. As representatives of this movement, be it the "groundswell", social media, Web 2.0, or whatever you want to call it, we need to think about how we can make transitions easier for those who still live very much inside the web 1.0 bubble (besides the occasional foray into MySpace, that is). Alltop is certainly a tool that can help with that move, which is why we felt like revisiting this application today.
Someone once called Alltop a "big pile of nothing" (you know who!). They couldn't have been more wrong. You may not have a use for Alltop yourself, but it's time you showed it to your mom and dad.
Comments
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i havnt still figured out the need for alltop, i love my rss feeds as it is!
Posted by: kerry | July 25, 2008 6:16 AM
"...in terms of quantity."
Posted by: th | July 25, 2008 6:44 AM
Research! popurls has personal recommendations, sharing, search and device dependent sites. I wouldn't call it just a one-category aggregator.
Posted by: Curtis | July 25, 2008 6:58 AM
What is Alltop?
Alltop aggregates RSS feeds from key blogs around the web. It categorizes them by topic and each topic gets its own page. There are around 30 topics varying from Design to Celebrities and Gaming to Mac. The most controversial topic is Egos which includes blogs from those that Guy considers to be the egos of the web. Guy Kawasaki chooses which blogs to publish as well as the ordering of the blogs. There's basically no user input involved in the hierarchy and choices of the blogs. No personalization at all.
Maybe Guy has the biggest ego of all!? Hmmmmmmmmmm.......
Posted by: David Braybrooke | July 25, 2008 7:06 AM
I agree that Alltop is pretty cool. But I don't think it has quite gotten there in terms of usage/interaction. Our blog is on the front of Marketing.Alltop.com and we don't see much traffic at all. Sure, lots of folks don't click through, but the amount is pretty tiny even considering that. Or maybe the markeitng topic is just not hot yet there. But I wish them lots of success, I think it is a great idea.
Posted by: Mike Volpe - HubSpot | July 25, 2008 7:08 AM
Alltop is cool. There is a similar site called locurls.com that shows local news, pix, and videos. It's only got a couple cities but is still pretty good.
Posted by: James | July 25, 2008 7:43 AM
David,
While I may have the biggest ego of all, you'd be amazed at the amount of user input--particularly from the Twitter community--that Alltop reflects.
In fact, whole topics are often suggested and created by users. Three examples:
http://nonprofits.alltop.com/
http://autism.alltop.com/
http://adhd.alltop.com/
Sarah: Thanks so much for this posting. Wow! I'll be grinning all weekend!
Guy
Posted by: Guy Kawasaki | July 25, 2008 7:45 AM
yeah, keeping up with industry news is easier with alltop, especially if you follow multiple industries
and my google reader, which is filled with hundreds of feeds, is soo slow that its almost unsuable
nice work Guy
Posted by: Marc Beharry | July 25, 2008 7:48 AM
@curtis From its homepage, you can see that popurls is very much focused on the internet crowd - reddit, slashdot, truemors, etc. A mainstream user visiting popurls.com for the first time won't "get it" in the same way as if you show them crafts.alltop.com, for example. My opinion.
@Mike I agree - it's actually a marketing problem. How will anyone discover Alltop? I personally showed the site to a handful of my mainstream user friends after a brief explanation and they were impressed. One who works at a university, for example, will be heading back to education.alltop.com again now that she knows of its existence. My blog post was a reminder that we should all take the time to introduce some of the tools we know of to our more mainstream friends and family members - because you never know, they might actually like it.
Your analysis = FAIL because of this: "A Web 2.0 beginner, on the other hand, signs up for a service like Twitter or FriendFeed, and is at a loss. ... When your friend asks you who to follow, you can point them to the Twitterati and Frienderati 'starter packs.' "
Seriously: if your friend is just now getting into Twitter or FriendFeed, then they're not going to be interested in what the Twitterati or Frienderati have to say because all they talk about is early adopting, 2.0, and social media. It'd be like telling someone who's getting cable to watch a channel called "All about how cable works!". They're going to be talking about things that most social media newbies won't care about, much less understand, and how is that going to make them want to keep using the service?
Why not do something crazy, and have your friend follow you? And maybe some of the people you follow, the ones that talk about stuff other than F8 and TechCrunch and iPhone.
Posted by: Stupid Blogger | July 25, 2008 7:52 AM
Stupid Blogger,
We tried to ameliorate this problem at Frienderati.alltop.com by describing what these people do, so that people can find people who don't just talk about "how cable works."
Regardless, I think a better analogy is that your friend signs up for Tivo, and you recommend that they check out Tivo Suggestions.
Guy
Posted by: Guy Kawasaki | July 25, 2008 8:25 AM
Alltop (and Netvibes) are definitly my top recommandation when I found somebody willing to do their first step with web2.0. Event as an 'early adopter', it is really usefull, especialy by providing preselected sources for categories I'm not familiar with.
Posted by: Fabrice Epelboin | July 25, 2008 8:26 AM
Alltop does NOT rock. I don't even need to debate this... one visit to the site and anyone is going to agree with that. It is simply not very great... nothing spectacular in the least. anyone who see's amazing things happening there are still at risk of being captivated for hours by objects that shine.
thumbs down.
p.s. 'you know who' was right... big pile of nothing. what's worse? it's copycatting a medium pile of nothing...
p.p.s why are we even talking about friggin Alltop? a.k.a. "Hey, did you hear? Google is prepping for an IPO!"
Posted by: Matt | July 25, 2008 8:33 AM
I wish they would get rid of that annoying floating footer!
Posted by: craig | July 25, 2008 8:42 AM
A simple implementation of RSS aggregation for European aggregated news is http://eufeeds.eu -- not customizable and stuff thou.
Posted by: Jos Moons | July 25, 2008 9:04 AM
One thing I give AllTop credit for is that it is a great starting point for those who want to find information quickly.
When I first started blogging on www.pulse2.com, I had to find out where I could find the resources I need to report tech information on my own. This will save starting level bloggers time in finding those resources.
Posted by: Amit Chowdhry | July 25, 2008 9:25 AM
I used Alltop as my homepage since its beginning, but I have recently opten out because there was too many categories available.
Perhaps Guy will chime in, when will you cap the amount of categories?
(Alphabetical was a nice switch, but it is still getting pretty large)
Posted by: Doug VS | July 25, 2008 10:09 AM
Doug,
The next version of the home page will offer search, categories, and alphabetical ways to use Alltop. No one method suffices.
Thanks,
Guy
Posted by: Guy Kawasaki | July 25, 2008 12:57 PM
Alltop is a complete joke of a site. It's just a rehash of Popurls with a bunch of inane sub categories.
Posted by: Rob | July 25, 2008 2:01 PM
my experience with Guy is that he is a nice man not a man with ego, i i live in (Jordan) the other side of the world to him and i just sent him a tweet to add ArabCrunch to startups.alltop.com and he did and added AC to muslim.alltop. ( I did not know him before that)
In fact muslim.alltop.com was opened bc of a tweet request by IslamCrunch to Guy (AC is not affiliated with IslamCrunch).
To me Alltop is useful to discover new websites and blogs,
I also agree with Sarah it is a good start for average users since they do not know what RSS is.
As for Traffic, to be honest i have not gotten much from Alltop.
Posted by: ArabCrunch | July 25, 2008 2:54 PM
Rob,
Inane like oped.alltop, adoption.alltop, autism.alltop, moms.alltop, and adhd.alltop? We're proud of such "inane sub categories."
Guy
Posted by: Guy Kawasaki | July 25, 2008 4:48 PM
What's up with the floater bar on the front page of Alltop? Please kill that. Pronto. The design is...not good. Butt hay...Google is low brow on design and people dig it, so it's probably just me. I'll stick with PopURLs.com ( http://popurls.com/ ) for now. They seem to be on top of their game and unpretentious in a humble kind of way.
Posted by: Shepard | July 25, 2008 7:36 PM
When Alltop debuted, I didn't really see a use for it. Boy, was I wrong. While I seldom use it (unless I'm reseaching a new topic/industry), it is great for introducing complete novices to blogs. When I talk about RSS in workshops, attendees have a hard time grasping it. But when I show them Alltop, they get it immediately. So I recommend it as an entry point for those who are not geeks or early adopters.
Posted by: Connie Reece | July 25, 2008 9:41 PM
Research! popurls has personal recommendations, sharing, search and device dependent sites. I wouldn't call it just a one-category aggregator.
Posted by: şapka | July 26, 2008 12:04 PM
Research! popurls has personal recommendations, sharing, search and device dependent sites. I wouldn't call it just a one-category aggregator.
Posted by: nakış | July 26, 2008 12:06 PM
Guy,
My issue with alltop is the point of an aggregation site is to have the best content on the web, in the most relevant topics available at your disposal.
The reason why Popurls is so great is it spits out a wide range of the best material on the web on a single page.
Creating different sub categories for every topic under the sun and aggregating a few low-trafficed blogs defeats this purpose for me.
Also, you shouldn't add someone to the list of aggregated blogs just because someone requests it. You are just diluting the top content out there by having no screening process.
You have to ask yourself: What is the mission of Alltop? To provide the best content out there on the web in one spot, or to cover every possible topic out there - even if it means filling these areas with subpar content.
I mean honestly - how many people use the Homeschooling, GTD, Utterati, and Event Planning categories. I would like to see the statistics.
My beef is that I'm a big quality over quantity guy. My philosophy: Instead of covering every category imaginable with medicore content, it's best to focus on a couple core areas where you can provide the best content imaginable to the user.
Rob
Posted by: Rob | July 26, 2008 5:00 PM
There is an Alltop clone here in Serbia at www.kolporter.com
Posted by: Mirko | July 27, 2008 4:01 AM
Please can anyone advise me on 2 counts,
1. i join everything but friendfeed but it's boring because nobody i know is on their, so i just never use it. Is there any point to this social web when none of your friends are on it? I think you types use it to meet strangers, but i don't want to meet people i don't know, and it would be insincere anyway, as which of the 'technorati' is going to live near my rural small town?
2. i hate rss feeds because they always force me to subscribe to a load of boring news about america - it's so big and full of people and events not related to my life. I know what i want, an rss feed where i can put in any website, such as eczasibasi virtual museum
http://www.sanalmuze.org/indexeng.php
that doesn't subscribe to some rss feed, and get notified when new stuff goes up on it, and i want to subscribe to rss feeds i do like, such as the guardian (uk newspaper), the hindu literary supplement, le monde etc. and have lots of delicious stuff all in one place uncontaminated by boring rubbish about facebook and ice hockey. Any advice? I am very bad tempered and will use nothing that is chock full of boring rubbish i don't want. Thanks ever so much to anyone who can help:)
Posted by: maiamaia | July 27, 2008 4:08 PM
Rob,
Just curious: Who appointed you to decide what topics are relevant and what content is good for all Internet users?
You might not think homeschooling (http://homeschooling.alltop.com/) is important, but I do.
Huh?
Posted by: Huh? | August 3, 2008 8:45 AM