Alltop
by Robin Wauters on July 6, 2009

There are a couple of places where you can go to get your fill of tech-related information and keep track of breaking news and events outside of your RSS reader or e-mail inbox. Google News isn’t one of those places (yet), but Techmeme and to a lesser degree Alltop, popurls and Digg are some of the most frequented websites when it comes to pleasing those who like to stay on top of hot tech news (us included).

Techmeme is undeniably the leader of the pack; it has solid algorithms and ranking systems in place that can quickly detect breaking news and gives you a clean overview of which other technology news sites and blogs are discussing it practically with minimal lag. It has its flaws, sure, but I dare you to show me a service that does what Techmeme is supposed to do better than they are.

by Robin Wauters on March 17, 2009

Alltop, the “online magazine rack” that offers visitors a clean overview of RSS-feed enabled sources categorized by topic, is launching version 3.0 today with the addition of a custom feed reader that’s supposed to make it easier for users to personalize their user experience when browsing for online news. But how personalized is it really?

The feature, dubbed MyAlltop, lets users create a custom page with a so-called vanity URL (e.g. my.alltop.com/techcrunch) where they can add feeds from a variety of topics and display all the widgets on one page, which can then be shared with others. All users need to do is register and add feeds to their public pages by clicking a small plus sign displayed next to feed widgets.

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. Personalized start pages like Netvibes, iGoogle, PageFlakes, etc. have been around for years, and they pretty much all offer the above and much more.

by Don Reisinger on September 22, 2008

Alltop

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.

Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Launches Frienderati: The Top Friends From FriendFeed
27 Comments
by Erick Schonfeld on July 14, 2008


If you want to know what the “top people on FriendFeed” are saying, you can now see their feeds on a new Alltop page called Frienderati. It is just a list of the top 100 or so names on FriendFeed (actually, only 94, for some reason), listed in alphabetical order by first name along with their five latest Twitters, blog posts, and other FriendFeed items. Or you could just subscribe to those same people on FriendFeed.

All the usual suspects are included on Frienderati. Mostly bloggers and other Web celebrities like Dave Winer, Loic Le Meur, Kevin Rose, and Guy Kawasaki (who is also one of the founders of Alltop and last week sold his other project, Truemors, to NowPublic). The site does not explain how someone gets on the list, but it appears to be the most followed individuals on FriendFeed. (Compare to this list on User21). There is a lot of overlap here with another Alltop site, Twitterati, which (you guessed it) shows the latest Tweets of the “top” people on Twitter (Kawasaki, Winer, Robert Scoble, etc.). Since most of the content on FriendFeed comes from Twitter anyway, Frienderati is really is pretty much the same thing, with a few different names.

Like other Alltop sites (which aggregate top feeds in other categories), this one is kind of a head-scratcher. There is no way to sort, so I guess you are expected to scroll through all 94 names to get what you are looking for. It would be helpful if the names at least appeared in order of their most recent entries, like on FriendFeed itself. Or you could just browse Friendarati to see which, if any, of the top names you might want to follow on your own. (Even though the point of FriendFeed is to follow what your real friends are saying—oh, never mind).

I like the name, though. It sounds like a cabal, and maybe it is. But I guess Top Friends was already taken.

Update: In an email, Kawasaki says the list is “based on all the other articles about the top people to follow plus our gut. Did we say it’s 100? We just tried to find about 100.” And he notes in a comment below that it is just meant to be a starting point for FriendFeed.

(Full list after the break):
Read More

ReVou Lets You Host Your Own Twitter
38 Comments
by Duncan Riley on March 24, 2008

revou.jpgThere’s a joke that no good Web 2.0 service has come of age until there’s a script available to clone it. Digg has Pligg, Popurls has ezUrls (both predated AllTop). Now Twitter has ReVou.

ReVou promises “Twitter clone software made affordable” for $399 as a self hosted script. The script offers all of Twitters features, including SMS support, and even comes with its own API. The only question then becomes is why would you want to host your own Twitter? This is what ReVou says:

Existing site owners can benefit from running a micro blogging service resulting in more viral growth for your website when your users interact with follow friends by receiving updates via our social network platform. With our SMS integration as well as custom API, we allow you to gain more revenues through purchase of SMS credits, revenues from web advertisements and as well benefiting from 3rd party applications built for your site using our API.

Naturally I’m a little skeptical but there is a thriving marketplace for Digg style voting sites, with some services (Sphinn comes to mind) doing particularly well in various verticals. Perhaps there’s no reason why Twitter clones might not have some success, be it as stand alone sites or more likely integrated into existing membership based sites.

Guy Kawasaki Formally Launches Alltop. Wow, It’s Bad.
144 Comments
by Michael Arrington on March 11, 2008

Last year Guy Kawasaki launched Truemors on the cheap (he spent $13,000), which is at least pointing the right way on Compete.com. Today he follows up with a sequel, AllTop. It’s a…well, it’s a RSS reader I guess. We actually wrote about this a month ago, but now it’s formal (the Chris Shipley quote cracks me up).

The home page lists a number of categories. Each links to a page that pulls in blog feeds. Here’s Venture Capital, for example. Kawasaki calls it an “online magazine rack,” and adds that it is “a news aggregation site that provides “all the top” stories for forty of the most popular topics on the Web. The headlines and first paragraph of the five most recent stories from forty to eighty sources for each topic are displayed. Alltop stories are refreshed approximately every ten minutes.”

So I sort of passed on criticizing Truemors since Kawasaki said it was more of an experiment in showing how something can be built for next to nothing. But AllTop is just a big pile of nothing. Back in 2005 Fred Oliveira, for example, built this site in about 5 minutes, which is pretty darn comparable to one of the AllTop categories. I’m giving this a big thumbs down. Sorry, Guy. I still love ya.

Alltop Thinks My Boss Has a Big Ego
43 Comments
by Mark Hendrickson on February 8, 2008

Guy Kawasaki has just launched a news aggregation site called Alltop that displays headlines from a preselected set of “top” sources. The headlines are broken into categories such as celebrities, gaming, and politics.

Which category displays headlines from our very own Michael Arrington’s personal blog CrunchNotes? Egos.

Now all of us around the office already knew Mike had a particular affection for himself, but we weren’t about to launch a website promoting that fact. Thanks for doing it for us, Guy.

Alltop gives homage to its inspiration, popurls, and serves as a kind of preconfigured Netvibes except only for RSS feeds. I wonder, however, why there’s no technology category. We found the site via Brian Solis.

bugbugbugbug
Techcrunch on Facebook