Chilligavva

This morning I was reading Stan Schroeder’s take on Kawasaki’s Alltop. I have to fully agree with Stan’s observation that candywrapping an existing concept will not make it a new concept. He compared Kawasaki’s alltop to popurls.
1.0 Screenshot of the ALLTOP site

Alltop is a RSS aggregator. Okay because Guy Kawasaki is behind this, i shall deem the site a visit. Two clicks later, I was so out of there. Being inspired by popurl is nice, but if i was a end user, i would stick to popurls, no questions asked. Why so?

Navigation:
First I go to alltop main site. Clicking on one of those links, lands me into a sub page in the same window. I didnt know where I was, being used to breadcrumbs in the traditional web design style. I glance around, and notice I was in an area called “social media“, by looking at the browser tab label. I wanted to go back to where i came from, but no, there is no page navigation, so use the back button. More power to browser buttons !

There is this color bar strip in each section, with the site scrolling below it.Well we all want to be the next iphone in design, but this is NOT the way to go. I guess simplicity is the attempt here.
Major scroll down later, there is no back link. I hunt around, and click on the “about us” link, looking for some clues. i see this text.

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”
source: http://alltop.com/about

The above text strikes me similar to a 3rd party disclaimer, the pharmaceutical advertisement kind. Results vary, dont hold me responsible.. etc.

The web 2.0 aspect
Its all about participation in web 2.0. Where is the participation in alltop?.
2.0 Customization bar in the popurls site.

Customization:
The nice features that popurl has, and alltop does not have is customization such as change backgrounds, change font, change layout style. The most important part of participation is being able to store options through a login, which is achieved via openid, in popurl. [greater flexibility here.]

Search:
And the foremost feature of any product is the “search box”. I want to find a feed, from within the site, and its not there. Forget browser toolbars etc. Thats not the way to think.

Contribute:
I cannot contribute a site, at the moment. No one likes being told what to read all the time. A good mix in approach would have helped.

So definitely, its not all on top, and has a long way to go.

Paul Stamatiou also has an interesting take, as well as StoweBoyd.

On a cynical note, I would say that web 2.0 has dissolved the most basic premise of a product: Good design and lots of thought. Its now very easy to register a site, and launch a hodge podge, hastily pulled product, and never invest in any kind of testing or feedback process. All you have to have is some popularity, lots of traffic and the ability to endorse a product. You then have the power of the web working for you. What, you might ask? Well all of us bloggers are now reviewing the product for free, thus adding to cost cuts for Kawasaki. The dilemma dear readers from my side, is do we participate knowing we are being used. And in a case of bad chess, where else is the fire or hot story? So at the end of the day, greed wins, and we choose to participate, in the almighty readership game.

For some insights into RSS, read the following:

• Pre RSS Formats
  
• Whitepaper on Web Syndication
  
• RSS Trends