Look who’s using MyAlltop.com
Well there’s a first time for everything. Kem Meyer just posted on Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop and since I’m such a fan of the site (and Guy for that matter), I am reposting her post in it’s entirety.
For the first time in my 5 years of blogging, I’m copying. It’s worth it because she nails it when it comes to understanding Alltop – which is a dynamic topical resource that allows you avoid search stress by aggregating all the best material on any given topic in one spot. Kem does a great job of reminding us all why we should all be using the customizable, power-feature of Alltop to do our work for us.
Here’s her post is all it’s communication glory:
All Time Alltop Questions and Answers …
I like and respect Guy Kawasaki. He has personally and professionally helped me several times over the past few years. He has visited Granger and even endorsed my book. Not long ago, we were exchanging emails and I asked him if there was anything I could do to help his causes like he had helped mine. He only asked one thing… spread the word about Alltop. Ok! Love to!
And, then I stalled out.
I didn’t understand what Alltop could do for me. That makes it pretty hard to talk about. So, then, I stalled longer because I was determined to figure it out on my own. And, then I stalled longer because I was embarrassed to admit I couldn’t figure it out on my own. I finally broke down and told him. Why didn’t I do that in the first place? I annoy myself.
And, now that I understand it, I’m pleased to report it has become a new tool in my arsenal of information search weapons. So, here’s my Q&A with Guy about Alltop. Hope it helps you.
- In plain English, what is Alltop? Alltop is a collection of over 600 “magazine racks” covering topics from adoption to zoology with food, politics, sports, and health in between. MyAlltop is the customizable, power-user feature of Alltop. It enables you to create a personal collection from over 32,000 information sources–if you’re interested in something, we probably have it covered.
- How is Alltop different than Digg? They’re two totally different animals. The purpose of Digg is highlight specific articles that interest, honestly, male techies. It helps them know that there’s a new version of Rails or Halo. The purpose Alltop is not to highlight specific articles or even sites/blogs but to enable people to scan “all” the news about a broad base of topics. For example, it will be long time before something from http://adoption.alltop.com/would appear on Digg. Here’s a good way to think of it:** How many people are in China? Go to Google.
** Shanghai company clones Mac ROMs and ships “Mac” netbook for $200. Go to Digg.
** What’s happening in China? Go to http://china.alltop.com/ - I don’t see Alltop replacing my normal RSS reader, but it’s not supposed to, is it? For some people, MyAlltop could, but first, most people cannot use a RSS reader. It requires they understand what RSS is, then they need to find the RSS feeds (which is non-trivial, believe me, we have had to find 33,000 feeds), and find a reader and use it. That’s the market for us. For people who have a RSS reader, then we offer something different because most RSS readers turn into another email inbox with hundreds of unread messages. And they are not good for scanning—that is, you only get what you subscribe to. An Alltop topic provides you a broader overview quickly.
- Where should my readers start to get a feel? Here http://church.alltop.com/ here http://digital-media.alltop.com/ here http://christianity.alltop.com/ and http://web-design.alltop.com/.
