Top 10 Sources, a human-edited blog index, announced a management team today.
Halley Suitt is CEO, Wendy Koslow is Editor in Chief and Indigo Tabor is Technical Editor in Chief.
From the site:
Top 10 Sources is a directory of sites that bring you the freshest, most relevant content on the Web. We know it’s impossible for anyone to keep track of the 20 million+ online sources of information. So our editors search Web 2.0 — blogs, podcasts, wikis, news sites, and every kind of syndicated sources online — by hand. Our Top 10 lists are updated frequently as great new sources come online.
The service has been heavily criticized by Mike Rundle and Om Malik (and subsequently defended by Dave Winer and John Palfrey) for copying blog posts. Adam Green argues both sides (see comments below for his further thoughts).
MY opinion: Top 10 Sources properly attributes and links to the original blog content, and they allow blogs to opt out. No problem.
And it is an excellent site for finding news. Combine this with Memeorandum’s or Tailrank’s ability to group conversations and we’ve got a real winner.
Sorry, Mike. I was not criticizing Top10Sources at all. Like you, I said that they properly attribute sources and allow blogs to opt-out. My only complaint was that they were republishing full feeds, and I described this as an unresolved issue among aggregators. I group myself with Palfrey and Winer on this one, although Mike Rundle and Om had valid issues and were right in raising them.
Thanks for the link Mike, and for the record, I definitely think that TTS provides an actual service for their readers. The idea behind the service is a good one, and I’ll never say that it’s not useful as all heck.
However, some people have contacted me saying that now they’ve realized they are aggregated in TTS, they’ve sent emails saying they want to opt-out, but received no response. Also, the idea that feeds are republished (in full) *before* consent is given rubs me the wrong way.
Since they just announced an executive team, I’m guessing that they’re going to monetize the concept sooner or later. However, if they attempt to stick advertising on any of these pages, they can bet the entire blogosphere (well, at least the bloggers who care about copyright infringement) will come in arms and publicly flog them. Why? Because TTS uses other site’s content to draw readers in, therefore running advertising on their site is essentially using other people’s content to make themselves money. A huge misstep in my book.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see on this one.
Adam,
You are right…I was mislead a bit by the title of your post. Would you like me to remove your link, or move it to “defenders”?
Mike – yes, I note your “update” in your post as well…the opt out option is important.
Well, I was trying to play it down the middle. I do think the full feed is problematic. I think leaving things as they are with your comments now in place is fine. I’m too much of an historian to want to change original documents.
Adam, see my change above.
Yep, that sums me up pretty well. Kerry is my sentaor after all.
“I voted for top 10 sources right after I voted against top 10 sources”
Hi Guys = Just a few things quickly, when all the flames cool down around here, I want you to take away the fact that Top Ten Sources is staffed by a bunch of bloggers — surely you’ve noticed that — and as bloggers we belong to a brilliant and dynamic community (read: Rundle, Green, Arrington, Battelle, Powers, Winer, Ali, Sessums, etc.) who we respect and appreciate. And we know that community will keep us honest and on our toes.
We are trying to listen to you and in many respects, agree wholeheartedly with your suggestions and have implemented or are implementing a large number of them.
And I’ve personally contacted a number of people who are top ten sources in our pages — in particular the “Web 2.0″ list to be sure they are okay with staying on the list. Ask John Battelle, and he’ll tell you he and John Palfrey and I have been in close communication.
In fact, Mike Arrington, I emailed you as well last Thursday but haven’t gotten any reply. I used the email you listed as your contact “editor@techcrunch.com” — was this incorrect?
If anyone has an issue with appearing on our pages, please email me at halley at google dot com.
We know our success will rise or fall based on our responsiveness to this community and we are part of and LOVE this community. We are bloggers!
As a blogger, I am finding that Top10 is feeding old information. Nothing out of the ordinary. The posts/links that are appearing are the full posts which are already in my reader..
So wheres the value ??
Is this a competition for the techcrunch…. NO WAY!
I think techcrunch out does digg and will definintely out do this website EVEN with a large team of editors.
I don’t know the owner of this site has but he/she’s sure done a deal with the devil to get these hot links!
You say “Top 10 Sources properly attributes and links to the original blog content”, but i must be blind because i can’t find those links to the orginal story. I did find some links to the blogs in their OPML, if you want to geek into that; but wow that is sooo indirect. Maybe i am missing the obvious … Whare are these links of which you speek ? Incidentally my node discussing this is at About: Top 10 Sources
I’ve made my thoughts about Top Ten clear in various postings on my blog, but I wanted to say that I think it is a potentially valuable tool — although I also think, like Adam, that providing full feeds is problematic… and it sounded like John Palfrey agreed. Maybe Top Ten could modify that part of their model and it would smooth the waters somewhat.
I’d like to see them try and re-publish the full-content feeds of Weblogs Inc. (now AOL of course) blogs without Calacanis’ permission.
He’s commented before about this, esp. re: Bloglines and how he would not be a happy camper having them make money off Ads while displaying the full content of WIN blogs.
Pretty sure re-publishing full article content that’s copyrighted and not Creative Commons licensed for such use would be a no-no, in a legal sense. Whether they can get away with it is another story…
I am writing to respond to the concern expressed by Seth (item 12) and others about whether Top 10 Sources is properly attributing RSS feeds to the original blog source.
The attribution has always been handled at the individual post level, with a link from every post and post fragment to the original post in the actual blog. The opinion expressed by Michael Arrington here on the TechCrunch site (above, in the initial presentation), that “Top 10 Sources properly attributes
and links to the original blog content”, is likely a reference to the existence of the feed title (blog name) and direct links to the individual posts in the actual blog.
In addition, in response to focused comments such as Seth’s and others, we have now implemented a link from the feed title (blog name) to the home page of the actual blog. When you click on the feed title, it opens the home page of the blog in the same window (good). We are currently working to implement this behavior for the links from the rendered posts to the original blogs, which still open in a JavaScript Popup window and which must, instead, open in the same window.
Thanks so much to the community for a very productive discussion, which I am sure will continue in these interesting times. -Indigo ( Technical Editor, toptensources.com )
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community for a very productive discussion, which I am sure will continue in these interesting times. -Indigo ( Technical Editor