Later this week you should see the Alltop badge in my sidebar. Broadcasting Brain is listed in Alltop Social Media.
Whether or not you think Alltop is a good thing, there’s really no downside for me, and most bloggers like me, to being included in Alltop’s Social Media page. If anything, I benefit from it more than Alltop does. I’m listed alongside a lot of bloggers that I read and admire. Alltop’s already thrown me a little bit of traffic.
It’s all good.
I’m of the same mind as Chris Brogan about Alltop. If Alltop opens up the blogosphere to people who don’t use RSS, other blog directories, or the like, then I think we all benefit. Let’s face it, there are far more people who don’t dabble in social media than do. Every bit of exposure helps. It’s a good way to help people find your blog.
Some people think Alltop has been overpromoted or that it’s riding on Guy Kawasaki’s reputation. I really can’t judge the former; time will tell us whether or not the latter is true.
Alltop’s method of displaying RSS feeds may be basic functionality that an idiot could use (or make), perhaps even redundant, but it sure doesn’t hurt anyone. Plus, it’s aimed square at the heart of that HUGE TAIL (not just a long tail) of potential readers.
Thanks to Alltop. I hope we all benefit! [and here's a post with some ideas on how you can use Alltop to your best advantage.]
test cmt.
talk about a club…
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I’m a fan of Alltop, I think as you say it’s a genuinely accessible “in” to a lot of great blog content.
To be honest, while there’s a lot of chat at the moment about the increased functionality of Google Reader, what I’d really love is an individually configurable Alltop. I love its presentation style and it’d be a perfect browser homepage.
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@Robin – when you say individually configured, do you mean where you could choose the Alltop pages that you’d want to see and then select the ones you want to read of the list of available blog? That sounds like a good idea, where the default view would be to see all blogs in that Alltop.
Something along those lines. Although the ideal for me would be to sign up to any blog and have my page of subscriptions presented in the same way as Alltop. So effectively not being limited to those already on Alltop. Admittedly that’s probably unlikely, but something that lets you configure from among the blogs they’ve already selected would be a great start.
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@Robin – your idea sounds awfully close to what Netvibes does already
Congratulations on the inclusion, Mark. I know there are mixed feelings out there about the Alltop portals, but it seems to me that the same “selection by editorial discretion” (versus user-created custom start pages) that’s often criticized is also the strength of these portals: after all, DMOZ.org gained its (fading) status as the mother of all directories primarily because the listings were human-edited. We may not agree with all editorial choices, but at least we know someone’s been making an effort to sort through the wheat/chaff of the Internet haystack!
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@RJLeaman – well, thanks. Truthfully, Alltop seems to be fairly open to requests, too.
[...] noted in her blog…Sarah Perez was inducted, also noted on her blog…and Mark Dykeman was added…congrats to all, the recognition is well-deserved…please pass along updates on traffic [...]
[...] However, we need to keep emphasizing things like portals, indexes, and search engines. Alltop, as I’ve written before, can only help to promote the blogosphere and social media in [...]