If you want to continue to pump out high quality content on your non-profit’s blog, you have to continually consume high quality content – every day. The problem for many folks is that it’s very difficult to manage massive quantities of content, even with tools like Google Reader.
That all changed when Alltop recently announced MyAlltop.
For folks who don’t know, Alltop is Guy Kawasaki‘s “online magazine rack” of the best blogs covering hundreds of topics. Sports, Motorcycles, Twitter, Skating, Classical Music, ADHD, Dating - you name it.
Until last week, users had to search page after page in order to find content they liked – and then bookmark that content with tools like Delicious. With MyAlltop, users can now save their favorite blogs with their own custom page. Once these blogs are saved they can be organized on the page – up, down – right, left.
So what does this have to do with Google Reader?
The week before MyAlltop came out, I read Grant Griffiths post asking “Is RSS a complete failure?“ Grant makes the case that although bloggers can’t live without RSS, blog readers are not adopting this technology.
Maybe I was channeling Guy when I commented: “We might have to wait for better readers for the average Joe.” I don’t know about you, but Google Reader has always been an ass-pain for me.
MyAlltop eliminates at least 11 headaches I’ve had with Google Reader:
- One page- Aren’t we all trying to get our lives onto one web-page?
- Easy to use – No folders or tags to continually organize.
- Hand selected blogs – Guy commented on Twitter: “Would you like to see how much we reject?”
- Find ”blog gems“- Just by browsing through Alltop.
- Share on Facebook and Twitter – Again, very simple for any user.
- Power of less - Limiting your focus to a small group of blogs means that you will actually read them (and not just “star” them with good intentions)!
- Extremely scannable- Interesting content can be easily scanned with pop-up excerpts.
- Easily add new blogs – One mouse click adds a blog to your custom page.
- Stay informed – “News about Alltop” email subscription pings you with new catagories.
- Smart news service – The Smartbrief service has ”personal research assistants: handpicking, distilling and disseminating the best and most important news stories from a wide range of sources.”
- Actual human beings! – If I want to give feedback on Alltop, you can easily contact them or ping them on Twitter. @neenz has been great at responding to the few questions I’ve had.
Other uses for MyAlltop?
- Louis Gray uses it for his extended backpages.
- Desmogblog is looking for suggestions on sites to add to their global warming feed.
How about your MyAlltop? Link it below:
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