Guy Kawasaki’s newest venture, Alltop, has gotten mixed reactions from the blogosphere. A lot of them pretty much say the same thing… Most write it off as “yet another news aggregator” or feed reader. I did the same thing.
Guy says that all top is the “Online Magazine Rack.” Lets think about that for a second. Whenever I travel I always hit the Hudson News mag rack and scan over the celebrity gossip rags. I can see all the headlines about who is doing what and if I want I can pickup that magazine and read more. I also do the same for the technology section of the magazine racks.
Alltop is much like that. It has all the mainstream news/blogs headlines and much like a magazine rack you can give it a quick browse and if interested follow the headlines to read more. Being it’s based on the most popular blogs per niche.
Let me give you some examples of who Alltop is for.
My Friends at Taggradio know nothing about RSS but they LOVE their soccer! So they have set their homepage to http://soccer.alltop.com/ and get a quick scan on the industry before starting their day.
My mother-in-law, Susan, loves art news so she has made http://art.alltop.com/ her start page.
For me I get a lot of value out of http://php.alltop.com/. Being the wannabe programmer that I cam often I will spot a headline on “how to do x” that will really make a impact in something that I do and often spur ideas.
Another great example of how I use Alltop is like just before I start working on a speech or a presentation I love to hit up http://speaking.alltop.com/ and look for tips. I very quickly glance gives me many headlines that get my motor going.
I will be honest I do not use it to read SEO or Blogs sections where I am located. I have those in my feed reader and being so entrenched in the industry odds are I will here about something that is worthy of reading.
In my opinion Alltop has a great future BUT it needs to reach those people who can benefit it most. It needs to reach my mom, my aunt, my grandma who have never heard of it. They all have no clue what RSS is and probably never will. Mix that with all the obscure niches out there that Alltop is adding and I think everyone should be able to see the long term strategy of Alltop.
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Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 43 comments… read them below or add one }
I think they should add some kind of icons or something, somewhere on the home page. Speaking purely from a design point of view. It might make it more usable or not, dunno….
I’ve only glanced through Alltop once or twice before, but now you’ve given me some ideas on how to utilize it better. Heading back over there…
i love it, all the quality sites in one place
I like the idea of flipping the header and footer around like Alltop does, that is kinda cool.
I have the same question about Alltop that I do for Twitter. What is their revenue model?
While I like that Alltop has all the “most popular” I can also remove ones I think are junk. Its a nice service
Shoe-
This is why I love reading your site. Short posts to the point with quantification. Not a lot of fluff
my favorite is startups.alltop.com and have it as my homepage since the day guy kawasaki announced its launch on his blog…
I agree with you over what AllTop’s biggest obstacle is. I think this is a challenge that a lot of Web 2.0 start-ups face: they have no trouble reaching the geeks (who’ll blog about them), but reaching out to the mass market consumer for whom the product is actually intended is often a challenge.
I loved Guy’s moderation at PubCon. Hope he pulls it off.
For me alltop is really good. Because i can find many valuable web sites and blogs there.
That is a sweet idea. I’ll be setting a page soon. Good luck to them. It’s good to see that there are still great ideas out there to be found and worked.
Looks like nice service to me
Thanks for your kind words. You can see our revenue model in action at mac.alltop.com.
All these forum aggregators are a dime a dozen. Where is the innovation ?
Guy is somebody with connections , insight and can get finding yet he chooses an aggregator.
——
xenbet.com
I am interested in seeing where this site goes.
I think it would be more effective if they had some graphics or icons to help people find what they were looking for quicker.
My site bizop.ca was just accepted by alltop in the law category.
It would be nice if they could give me a widget for my top 6 law blogs, a more specific widget than blogrush.
Alltop seems like a pretty cool site. I like the fact that it covers such a wide array of niche topics. I like to check out the whats going on in the blogosphere and see that many of the sites I look at are here, shoemoney, problogger, John Chow. The only thing that bugs me about it so far is the stationary footer.
I added my blog to alltops three or four days ago and have seen a few hits. Not a ton, but then again, my blog in general doesn’t get that many hits yet.
I agree that if they market it to those who know nothing about RSS and other readers it could be rather sucessful! Good luck to the guys!
Mr. Kawasaki you are really doing great. Yesterday i watched one of your presentation, The Art of Innovation and its really fantastic. Thanks for it.
Never heard of it but the suggestion you made on widening the audience is a good idea.
I didn’t know you could add sites. I am going to do that right now.
I mean, what is the deal with this Altop? I thought you were impersonating Seinfeld. Seriously folks, I think Guy is a little behind the times with this.
I like you Guy, but the header is hideous. In the FAQ:
“Our (tiny) header is everyone else’s footer, and our footer is everyone else’s header. We did this to emphasize that “content is the top priority” at Alltop, not our brand identity.”
That’s pretty hard to believe. The way it is now, it appears to me that the brand is way more important than the content. Do people actually want this thing following them around on their browser?
Anyway, good luck with the site Guy. I’m rooting for you.
It’s cool and popurls is my browser home page. But how many of these do we need?
Good point, there should be a close link to make it go away…
That’s Guy Kawasaki, private aviation evangelist.
I contribute to Guy’s Truemors and see some decent if unspectacular traffic that way.
Just checked out the site after reading the blog, and my first reaction was: wow, what a clean site – just what I want and no more. Something appealing about the ultra simple design. Bookmarked it, will see if my opinion sticks.
Hmmm, doesn’t really look that inviting at first. No info at the top (nor the bottom), i wouldn’t even know that it is about if you hdn’t told me, lol.
was this a paid review with a different style ?
That php link makes me feel like I am missing my calling. Interesting site.
A good punt for Alltop. It definitely needs to get known by thye masses, and what better way than a quick Shoemoney review to get some juice flowing.
Handy for people who are interested in a specific field, especially noobs. Once you’ve explored your niche thoroughly and keep on top of things constantly you’ll be less inclined to use this service.
I launched a similar news aggregation service a while back. A lot of new & innovative features are planned in the coming weeks/months.
I would hav nt known if u hadnt said it to me lol
!!!
good work…
how does one create “feed-aggregator” pages like this one and popurls ?
I want to include such a thing instead of the standard blogroll which i maintain. Also, i dont want to use any of the readily available flash feed-fetchers …is there any api/feed kind of thing which i can use ?
thx in advance
Yep! Another news aggregator. What could you?
To make money online you need to find new idea, provide content, or create technology project.
I don’t blame guys who want to get market share getting news from RSS feeds creating project which update itself automatically.
I love it, all quality things in one site.
Guy,are you opening this up to other advertisers?
I am interested in seeing where this site goes.
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