It wasn’t too long ago that Guy Kawasaki announced Alltop, a news aggregation site that tries to make it easy to find the top stories on a slew of topics (212 at last count) from some of the better sources on the Web. One of the biggest problems with Alltop was its poor design and cluttered layout. But in a major redesign that improves the overall experience, many of those issues have been resolved.
Alltop now lets users search for topics by way of a categorical listing, alphabetical listing, or keyword search, all of which is conveniently placed on the site’s homepage. From there, you can decide to search for something specific, or click your way around the topics based on your interests.
But one of the main questions with Alltop still remains: is it a valuable enough resource to make users forget about creating their own Netvibes pages and use this service as their source for news? After some close inspection, I’d have to say that it’s getting close.
Searching around Alltop is quick and easy. I first made my way through the tech pages and evaluated the quality of the site’s tech section. It offered the latest headlines from Techmeme, which was a welcome addition, and along with TechCrunch, featured informative content from dozens of the best tech sites on the Web. It was a treat.
I had a similar experience on Alltop’s baseball page, which provided me with the latest news from each team and the latest content from some of the most reliable sources in the sports realm, like Small White Ball and Mudville Blogs. The information was categorized well and, with the option to hide the less useful sources, I was able to shrink the page to a more manageable size.
In each category, the experience was much the same: simple, elegant, useful. And compared to Newsflashr, Alltop’s main rival, it was a treat to see a site that’s actually designed well and not so excruciatingly ugly. That said, Newsflashr offers a Techmeme feed that lists the latest headlines from each of the the top 100 Techmeme sources, which may come in handy for Techmeme fanatics. (Alltp, how about a Techmeme Leaderboard page?)
Alltop’s redesign makes up for some of its earlier shortcomings and is ideal for anyone trying to find one place to read all the best news.
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Too much information on the page. I still prefer Google News though.
i like this for finance/investing/stocks
http://finviz.com/news.ashx
I don’t think any of these kind of news/homepage sites will ever reach the mass market they are hoping for. Netvibes, Popurls, Alltops… just look at the traffic they get for proof that people don’t want this service.
They just need to niche!
Checked compete.com and alltop appears to be on steady growth since Jan 08. Numbers are likely higher than what appears but i don’t think the readership has come yet. Better to build the base now than miss out on traffic later.
Wow how much did they pay you to write this? All they did was redesign it a bit (it’s arguable whether or not the redesign is good) and Alltop goes from “Wow, it’s bad.” (TC’s headline) to “hey I found baseball newz in mah online magazine rack!”
The service is crap and this post reads like an ad.
Moving in the right direction. I like the search/filter interface, but, when all is said and done, the user is still left with an enormous page full of links.
Yeah I’m not convinced ey, with other succesfull sites like origianalSignal and PopUrls doing this so well … I’m thinking the new AllTop home page is a miss.
For example, try searching for Mac, (I was talking to Guy about this yesterday on Twitter, I don’t think he got it). If you search, or click M, you don’t see Mac anywhere, instead it’s Macintosh (Steve) … now I’m going to suggest 80+% of users whould have NO idea Macintosh = Apple Mac, espcially the iPod generation.
Do a search for Apple, even in the technology sector, again .. nadda. Yes the information is there if you KNOW how to look for it.
My thought is this information needs to be detirmined by tags, not defined categories. The days of the category are gone. Let me tag information as I see it, then let other users search - this way you might find you have something that is useful.
Sorry Guy, I think you missed the boat with this one.
Without rss feeds it’s pretty much dead to me, I can have folders in google reader of the same topics containing the same sites which is much more convenient and means I don’t miss any stories because I can catch up at my own pace.
true, googlenews gives a better service….sorry alltop
This is serious information overload. Services like this, while nice to have on occasion, do nothing to pull me away from my already-existing feeds. I don’t see the point in having news stories delivered from 400 different sources. Simplify, people, SIMPIFLY!
Sigh. The web needs to be easier to find and so early stage aggregation tools, like this, will open up that for the masses providing that they’re marketed well. I think Alltop has done a decent job at this. Citing that you prefer Google Reader is like saying you’d prefer to drive a car than ride in it - few mass consumers, who are what really matters in all of this, are at a stage where they’re adopting feeds. Aggregators and crawlers like this, therefore, are a good natural next step. The web experience needs to get smaller. By having these categories, now marketers and advertisers can see a snap shot of a category, and potentially chart and research analytics by category to get accurate benchmarks. As a small media publisher in the past and somebody who does a ton of top level business now, trust me when i say these things help. Alltop is like Bacons or Media Map in a sense.
Consumers can find, in a single source, all these properties online. Y’all should want this
P.S., Compete analytics = flawed. I would never count on it as a source, as well as Alexa….
I was very sceptical of alltop, after all I have my netvibes setup with my carefully selected feeds accumalated over years of research for credibility, why would I need alltop?
It so happens that services like alltop become useful when you want to start tracking or temporarily get info on a new area of interest, for instance suppose you are not clued into the startup/venture capital beat, you can spend a lot of time finding credible sources in google and setting up the feeds in igoogle/netvibes or use something like alltop to zero on a preselected and often credible sources, saving you some time in the process.
I’ve been using it for politics but have not explored other topics. The new design is inviting, and the metaphor, “online magazine rack” might inspire me to explore… we’ll see!
A twelve year old could make this site and loads of people have. So his name is Guy Kawasaki, is that really enough to get so much attention for mediocre crap!?
Take a done existing idea - go to electricpulp.com and have them build it - DO NOT innovate - Say, slowly; “Hi! My name is GUY KAWASAKI!!!!!!!!!!!! This is Alltop”
Please show me the sites that your peers (12 year olds) have created with aggregations. We’re always looking for good feeds.
Thanks,
Guy
Why don’t you have one of your kids google “popurls clone script”, give them a weekend and see what they come up with?
Clever wording aside Guy, was anything of what I said untrue?
Try looking at the sites you stole the idea from for your feeds. Seriously, how can someone like you be so pathetic?! I even liked Art of the start. Shame on me.
popurls.com was and is the only site where single page aggregation really works. alltop and all other copycats just don’t get it.
These kinds of sites will grow - there is too much crap around and most people need help.
TechCrunch, please consider never covering a site redesign again. This is useless fluff. The lipstick applied to this particular pig will change nobody’s life. I don’t care what big names are involved.
CG
I wish I could have an AllTop page where I could put my own RSS feeds in. I’m not terribly interested in reading what they deem important. But I guess the feed reader business isn’t what AllTop is going for.
My blog ArabCrunch is featured in to Alltop channels, startup.alltop.com and islam.alltop.com Thanks to Guy
that fact is that it is 100% safe.
Guy is a nice guy but when i invited him to visit Jordan he said he is afraid to come to Jordan. and he asked whether Is it safe for Americans.
Anyone can convince Guy to change his mined?
sorry it is Muslim.alltop.com not Islam.all.top.com
Quite surprise this horrible startup has been mentioned a couple times on TC.
Don-g your wrong!
Alltop brings 000 added value to all those feeds, yes its cute to look at but what does that help me? Big time waster with NO filters.
By comparison, the other site you mention (Newsflashr.com) brings lots of added value: useful filters by “topics” and “time” and a real “news search” (that includes Google News)
And I have no problem with its simple, very functional design - take some time to poke around it and you’ll start to appreciate it much more, the “topics view” is really ground breaking
I have been aware of Alltop since their first release and wasn’t that impressed but I really like Alltop v2. At auditoriumA.com we carefully pick and choose select content to highlight to our visitors from around the web and Alltop is an excellent primary source.
Good work!
http://www.auditoriumA.com
Check this out .. Explains the new face lift and why they might have done it … http://www.jtdesigns.com/jtblog/?p=84
Despite never asking to be added, many of my sites were added without permission to AllSpam and Kawasaki went all drama queen-like when I asked to be removed. He then used my email address without permission to spam me about this upgrade.
Alltop itself is nothing more than a splog. People adding themselves for pure vanity desperate for more traffic and linking back not realising that their own content on Alltop shows up before their original stuff on their blogs. The usual dodgy techniques from the guy still holding on to his one hit wonder in the business world 20 years ago.
The Cranky Product Manager blog was listed briefly on Alltop’s new “product management” page, with pole position in the top right corner (above the fold). Anyway, after the Cranky Product Manager posted a “thankyou, but what’s the big deal about Alltop anyway” (as is required by her cranky online persona), she was demoted to the very bottom of the Alltop page. Keep in mind that the Cranky PM blog probably has a bigger and more loyal readership than 25 of the 28 product management blogs listed. Product Beautiful, another blog that also publicly questioned what was so great about Alltop was similarly demoted.
Granted, Alltop’s FAQ says they give better page position to “their friends”, and it’s Alltop’s site so they can do what they want. But their actions do seem to undermine their claim to be an “online magazine rack” that aggregates only the “best of the best”. Perhaps they should tag it “the best of the blogs that publicly fawn over Alltop” instead.