Yesterday on Thinking Home Business I wrote about the new web content aggregator site Alltop and observed that it is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to get a quick, interesting overview of current online coverage of their favorite topic. That post was focused on the Small Business category on Alltop.
This deswalsh.com site is listed in the Social Media section of Alltop.
One commenter on my post yesterday asked why I would not just use a feed reader. My reply was that it was a case of complementarity, not either/or.
The feeds on my reader (or rather, readers) are chosen by me. That’s an advantage, in that I can avoid having information coming in that is of no interest, or an unproductive distraction. It’s also a drawback, because I know that:
The selection of sites featured on Alltop is made by others. So I get to be better informed than if I were left to my own reader-stuffing devices and I get to be more entertained than if I had to be solely responsible for surprising myself.
To be honest, initially I had been a bit wary of the site after reading Jeremiah Owyang’s contentious - and contested - post, in which he labeled the Alltop project a “gimmick site with marketing flair”.
And Community Guy Jake McKee has an interesting point when he argues that Alltop, with its lack of login, RSS and commenting, could be called an “anti-social media site“.
Jake also says that Alltop is “fast, focused and useful”. I agree. And, also like Jake, I am happy to have my site included. Thanks Guy.
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…and by anti-social media, I didn’t mean anything wrong about it. anti, in the sense that it doesn’t have many options or portability or other hallmarks of the “traditional” social media sites.
But as someone who LOVES to browse the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble, I loved Guy’s analogy of Alltop being a “virtual magazine rack”. It’s for browsing first, consuming second.
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That’s an excellent analogy, Jake. As a library and bookstore browser from my youth, I get it
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I am constantly asked what alltop.com is and why people should use it. I definitely agree with you Jake. The analogy Guy gives about a virtual magazine rack is the best way to describe it.
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Thanks for the plug and kind words. We revel in the fact that we’re the anti-social social web site!
Guy
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Congrats on getting included- this should bring some extra traffic to your site.
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