Alltop.com – Really all top? The 10 pros and cons

Alltop (self description) is similar to the countless web-directories out there. Alltop is owned by Nononina, which again belongs to Guy Kawasaki.

The primary differentiators of Alltop in context to known web-directories are

1. [pro] they aggregate content from RSS feeds throughout the web and don’t index static websites
2. [con] they are not interactive meaning that users can not submit sites they consider interesting but are rather at the mercy of the editors from Alltop
3. [pro] an exceptionally clean UI
4. [con] While even open directories like DMOZ and alike have editors to ensure at least some quality of the content, Alltop controls what is published. They do claim to accept submissions from the outside (beside a variety of other resources) but let’s consider that they have a few million regular readers. And above that we’ll assume that 10% regularly submit feeds that are to be indexed because they are perceived as interesting by this specific reader. And now show me the workforce that can evalute content of that magnitude.
5. [con] Alltop gives their readers no way to rate the content which usually ends up in a cluttered platform with lots of less valuable content which scares away a lot of readers
6. [con] Unlike syndication engines like Digg, del.icio.us, Sphinn, etc. Alltop features no RSS technology to subscribe to and somehow profit from the aggregation – while the whole site utilizes a lot of new programming technology which makes it really appealing there is no way you can benefit from the effort. This of course leads people back regularly which grants the site a lot of traffic which again brings the sites/blogs/feeds featured a lot of value if terms of PageRank-ing
7. [pro] truly a reasonable amount of good feeds burned in there like the one of my friend Hjörtur Smarason
8. [con] while other sites undertake “life threatening” efforts to make their sites easy for everyone to add to social bookmarking sites, Alltop does not even offer a “add to bookmark” button or similar
9. [con] A huge amount of information requires a good search capability. Alltop provides no search functionality at all to scope through the wide variety of information they acquire
10. [pro] Ok, I tried hard to find another one.. but what I really have to admit is that the site utilizes some state of the art technology – oh, I mentioned that already, right?

Seriously – Alltop is a good approach to aggregate good feeds out there. Yet I would have seriously expected a lot more from someone (Guy Kawasaki) who is regularly referred to as one of the Internet’s gurus.

Bottom line: Lars Hilse is known to be an asshole at times. But I am always objective and tried really hard to find some kudos for Alltop. But with no social media features included at all to a site that utilizes so many of them to generate content really isn’t bright, but is surfing on somebody’s success.

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