Comments on: Alltop Launches Personalized Feed Reader That Can Hardly Be Personalized

By: Planner Reads » Blog Archive » Alltop fights technological determinism. The experts are wrong

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:15:09 +0000

[...] Alltop has been bashed in the technology community. And in my opinion this bashing represents the worst of the technology [...]

By: John Wright

John Wright — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:24:59 +0000

your*

By: John Wright

John Wright — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:23:44 +0000

“In my opinion, anyone who thinks the process of personalizing your RSS feed reading experience with Netvibes or iGoogle is cumbersome will probably feel the same way after trying MyAlltop.”

I used to do this with PageFlakes, I briefly gave Netvibes & iGoogle a try. And yes I felt the same way when MyAlltop came out.

But that was ok because for over a year I’ve had in my mind to build what I wanted. And now I’ve done it

Thy News http://thynews.com allows you to easily create a custom news page by searching for feeds and adding them to you page with a nice AJAX user experience.

Here is a demo screencast http://bit.ly/thynews-demo

By: Vidal

Vidal — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:46:37 +0000

Get a Popurls and Alltop Clone PHP Script here…
http://www.rssgeni.com

By: Imran Ali

Imran Ali — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:15:22 +0000

It might be that Alltop’s misfired in their implementation of this, but their heart’s in the right place

Ask a hundred people what Facebook or Twitter is and most will have a response. Ask them about Firefox or RSS and most won’t have a clue.

There’s a place for services like Alltop – to address the great many people interested in aggregated news, but without the knowledge or patience to learn about RSS.

You don’t need to understand POP3 to use email, so why do you need to understand RSS to use personalised news?

By: mattmcb

mattmcb — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:51:53 +0000

This is going to be huge and when you use it with sthrt.com it works great!

By: Cindy Sue Causey

Cindy Sue Causey — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:06:36 +0000

I’m with you on this, Michael.. It *is* like a “walled”, first step into feeds where people can play and feel like they aren’t going to hurt anything..

*Am* having trouble getting around it cognitively, though.. Seem to find myself constantly bouncing between pages before finally ending up where I need or wish to be.. Once I figure out why, that ever elusive dadburn “why”, I’ll pass it on to them..

As to not finding this or that blog on there, there is a subscription option of some kind, think it’s at the bottom, that allows people to submit blogs and RSS providing websites to Alltop, including suggestion of the appropriate category..

By: robert ivan

robert ivan — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:38:58 +0000

@mike p
“As a site owner, I’m not going to get on the AllTop-hatin’ bandwagon. They’re proving to be a good source of traffic for me”

Exactly, so what happens when your site is not included in the appropriate alltop? Isn’t that what this article is all about?

As a site owner who isn’t listed on alltop all i can do is continue to submit my site till someone feels sorry for me or till i stop caring and hope my traffic doesn’t get hurt too much.

Guy has influence, and that means eyeballs, so regardless of what i think about the Guy, i want on to be listed on alltop for the follow-through to my site.

By: LGR

LGR — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:11:18 +0000

The only reason to join is to get your URL, add a feed and never go back. Since I refuse to kiss up I can’t even put my feed in it, thanks for nothing.

By: john

john — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:39:22 +0000

allcrap

By: Greg Collier

Greg Collier — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:04:13 +0000

I may be mistaken, but from what I understand most everything you see served on alltop (user requested content excluded) is based on “the teams” own personal choices. Meaning, they selected most of the channels themselves. I have no problem with that however, some understandably may.

Other than that I found it to be a useful resource.

By: Mike P

Mike P — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:09:38 +0000

As a site owner, I’m not going to get on the AllTop-hatin’ bandwagon. They’re proving to be a good source of traffic for me on top of being my favorite way to get the feeds I’m interested in. I’m subscribed to NetVibes, but AllTop just feels cleaner for me.

By: Dan Foley

Dan Foley — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:00:49 +0000

I did a video about a desktop ticker that I mashed up http://www.yout...h?v=fOWx7nM47V0 . The link to the ticker is on my blog http://danfoley...g-alert-system/ .

It pops up when there is something new on a blog you are following.

By: Jeremy Nolan

Jeremy Nolan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:24:18 +0000

Alltop, anyone could programmed that site

By: jpg

jpg — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:03:15 +0000

You know, i like the forbes rss feeds. You can enter a search term and set that up as your feed (for example, i used the term “bank of america” and it’s like their search results for bank of america are sent to me via rss). Alltop however… doesn’t really cut it for me.

By: Failed Argument

Failed Argument — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:39:14 +0000

It’s funny how TC realizes AllTop doesn’t do anything others haven’t done or is trivial, but yet they do not post similar critiques of crappy Y-Combinator startups that get posted here all the time.

I bet if a Y-Combinator startup had launched with identical features to MyAllTop, TechCrunch would be raving about it.

By: plank

plank — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:37:20 +0000

Search for “layoffs” and they return one result…”baseball”.

huh?

How is this useful?

By: Additional Place To Find Good Education Blogs | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:33:49 +0000

[...] reviews. You can read a positive review at Free Tech For Teachers and a less enthusiastic one at TechCrunch. I tend to be more on the positive-side, even though you can only include blogs in your own personal [...]

By: Sarah Austin

Sarah Austin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:26:24 +0000

btw… my 2cents: the twitterati should be based on an algorithm and not who “they” think should be on it.

By: James

James — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:21:48 +0000

I think one of the disconnects here is that AllTop is not aimed at the typical TechCrunch reader. It’s hard to put yourself in the shoes of an utter newbie if you’re not one.

Is a walled garden approach ultimately limiting? Sure. Can you still build a decent business around it? Absolutely. Say what you will about AOL, but they have made a lot of money over the years.

AllTop is not trying to be the next Facebook of the world and they are not trying to push the envelope on new technology. They have a niche that they seem to be serving well, if the traffic numbers are any indication. If you keep your costs low, that’s not a bad business model.

By: Sarah Austin

Sarah Austin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:17:42 +0000

Perfect! Check out what Guy has to say about all top on my exclusive interview with him:

http://pop17.co...s/guy-kawasaki/

By: Michael Kimsal

Michael Kimsal — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:31:36 +0000

I can’t seem to reply to Robin directly, but I can say that she’s never had to demonstrate RSS to my mom. Showing people RSS preconfigured with real stuff in it is much easier than the ‘blank canvas’ – they get a sense of the purpose and benefits with ‘real’ stories immediately.

By: Zach Weisman

Zach Weisman — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:28:16 +0000

Great for people who don’t know what RSS is. I predict this market will shrink exponentially and Alltop will merely help push itself out of business.

As soon as people get the hang of how it works they will UPGRADE to Netvibes, iGoogle etc…

Perhaps they can capture the market and evolve quickly, but we shall see…

Good luck either way!

Great design!

Zach

By: Raj

Raj — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:23:42 +0000

Alltop is doing better than TechMeme now. Pretty amazing actually.

By: Hipocrates

Hipocrates — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:22:42 +0000

Perhaps Guy should stick to what he’s good at…writing books and giving speeches about things he aspires to do successfully.