Comments on: Alltop Launches, Do We Need Another News/RSS Aggregation Site?

By: Gerard

Gerard — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:12:54 +0000

Like Zoran, a couple of my sites got placed on AllTop – not because I approached them, but an avid reader who knew of the service got in touch with them. I was pleased to be involved, and I do think there’s room for this kind of service as an extended kind of PopURLs for certain niches.

That’s not to say people won’t have their own custom Netvibes and iGoogle pages to cater to their specific needs, but the magazine rack is a good analogy.

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:58:57 +0000

I think they’re basically aiming at the people who don’t yet know what those little orange icons mean. Regardless, I’m happy, they added my site to the science section (above the NYT!)

By: Zoran

Zoran — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:15:45 +0000

We are more then happy to be included in http://fashion.alltop.com category and interesting thing, for clicks we got from that source we had fantastic number of page views/visit and 0% bounce rate.

You should understand that real value of site like that is it filters people and let them choose by their affinity what they want. It makes 1 cent user worth bucks.

By: Arnold Zafra

Arnold Zafra — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:28:38 +0000

Loren – Yeah, call it a constructive criticism. :-)

Richard – The site’s simplistic interface could actually work both ways. Either you find it useful or confusing. I agree, the lack of about/help page adds to the confusion as well.

Dan – My point exactly.

Nick – Thanks for the tip off. Will check the site later.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:43:08 +0000

I use sites like these all day long instead of wasting time keeping up my reader…

sportsnipe.com for sports
web20.originalsignal.com for web20
popurls.com for social

Time saver for me for sure…

By: Nick Wilsdon

Nick Wilsdon — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:34:11 +0000

Hi Loren/Arnold,

Not sure if you have seen our attempt at this – SocialBlogroll.com? It’s more dynamic than the others, as we take votes from the blogrolls of over 120 marketers (including your blogroll here at SEJ). The more votes a site has, the higher it appears in the rankings. So, maybe you find that a more democratic way of choosing who is shown Arnold? ;)

If your blog appears in the system you can claim it and add tags, which will make it appear on a unique tag page too. This gave us the ability to have lots of niche aggregators, such as ‘PPC’ or ‘Link Building’.

We’ve just started out, but I’d be interested in any feedback you want to give us.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:23:11 +0000

I went to the site yesterday…it is very odd. I did find a few sites that i never heard of…and were somewhat decent…but hitting this daily? not really sure I would..i can get my iGoogle to do somewhat the same thing and have it customized to my liking.

By: Richard Burckhardt

Richard Burckhardt — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:05:31 +0000

Very nice, but I find the main page to the site confusing. It looks like a directory. There’s no explanation of what it is other than the bar across the bottom of the screen, which I find kind of annoying ‘cuz it never goes away.

Anyway, I’ll bookmark the SEO page and try it out for a while. Keeps me from having to log in to iGoogle all the time.

Thanks!

By: Loren Baker, Editor

Loren Baker, Editor — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:51:16 +0000

Nice write up Arnold, and I’m sure Alltop will appreciate the critical points.

I think there is space on the market for an all in one RSS aggregation system.

My favorite automated RSS aggregator is the Google Desktop Sidebar and I’m surprised more and more RSS offerings aren’t doing something similar.

Sidebar actually monitors the blogs that you read, and adds RSS feeds to your readers absed on the frequency and categorization of those blogs.