Whats The Deal With Kawasaki's Alltop

Guy Kawasaki's newest venture, Alltop, has gotten mixed reactions from the blogosphere. A lot of them pretty much say the same thing... Most write it off as “yet another news aggregator” or feed reader. I did the same thing. Guy says that all top is the “Online Magazine Rack.” Lets think about that for a second. Whenever I travel I always hit the Hudson News mag rack and scan over the celebrity gossip rags. I can see all the headlines about who is doing what and if I want I can pickup that magazine and read more. I also do the same for the technology section of the magazine racks. Alltop is much like that. It has all the mainstream news/blogs headlines and much like a magazine rack you can give it a quick browse and if interested follow the headlines to read more. Being it's based on the most popular blogs per niche. Let me give you some examples of who Alltop is for. My Friends at Taggradio know nothing about RSS but they LOVE their soccer! So they have set their homepage to http://soccer.alltop.com/ and get a quick scan on the industry before starting their day. My mother-in-law, Susan, loves art news so she has made http://art.alltop.com/ her start page. For me I get a lot of value out of http://php.alltop.com/. Being the wannabe programmer that I cam often I will spot a headline on “how to do x” that will really make a impact in something that I do and often spur ideas. Another great example of how I use Alltop is like just before I start working on a speech or a presentation I love to hit up http://speaking.alltop.com/ and look for tips. I very quickly glance gives me many headlines that get my motor going. I will be honest I do not use it to read SEO or Blogs sections where I am located. I have those in my feed reader and being so entrenched in the industry odds are I will here about something that is worthy of reading. In my opinion Alltop has a great future BUT it needs to reach those people who can benefit it most. It needs to reach my mom, my aunt, my grandma who have never heard of it. They all have no clue what RSS is and probably never will. Mix that with all the obscure niches out there that Alltop is adding and I think everyone should be able to see the long term strategy of Alltop.