Get Your News on Alltop
A couple of months ago I learned about a great website called Alltop.com. The concept is simple, they take a particular topic, like world news, and give you the five most recently published stories from websites that cover that subject. The page is laid out with three columns and all the sites on one page. Your eyes can scan the subject lines, left to right and scroll down through the page. It’s a fast way to get the latest news on any topic.
Of course I was happy that two of my site feeds were accepted as news sources, Step by Step Fundraising is now listed on the non-profit page and Top School Fundraisers is on the education page.
Writing about Alltop earlier this week, Chris Brogan in his post Alltop- Encouraging the Mainstream says:
Alltop isn’t for you or me. It’s for friends and family and coworkers who aren’t yet surfing at the speed of light with Google Reader, or adding meta commentary via FriendFeed. It’s for our neighbor who still logs into AOL, or people who want to read a sampling of information without a lot of customization.
Well, yes and no. I would say that Alltop is great for people who are not as familiar with RSS or blogs. But it’s not just for newbies or the non-internet obsessed people. (I thought everyone was internet crazy these days?)
Pros
Alltop is so easy to scan with its clean three column format. Through Alltop I’ve found quite a few new blogs that I hadn’t heard of before. A few of them I even subscribed to. If I’m researching or just interested in a particular subject I can jump on the Alltop page dedicated to that topic and briefly scan it for news items that jump out at me. This is helpful in looking for blog topics to write about or when I do link posts. I found a couple of great sites via the Environment Alltop page for the Earth Day Resource Roundup that I posted today.
Another pro that I have to mention is that when I submitted my feed to them they were both prompt and very courteous when replying back to me. It’s nice to “meet” great people on the web!
Cons
Alltop keeps those top 5 posts listed even if you saw them the last time you were on the site. Bloglines on the other hand, keeps all of a feed’s posts new until you click on the site name. Then the items are displayed in the right hand side. So with Bloglines it’s beneficial both ways, it will keep more than just 5 items new (a couple of my feeds are in the hundreds) and if you do review that feed it brings it down to zero so you are not having to look at items you have already seen.
Thumbs Up for Alltop
Overall I really like Alltop and wish Guy and his team well. I don’t think it will replace Bloglines for me, but I don’t think it’s meant to. It’s a fast, hassle free way to keep up on news of interest to me or explore new topics.
