I had just finished posting about Networks and Topic Hubs when I saw the announcements around the launch of MyAllTop (1, 2, 3). The reviews are somewhat mixed, and I'm certainly sitting here scratching my head.
I always perceived Alltop as a way to build Topic Hubs. This is a similar, but limited, form of what we are doing around sites like eLearning Learning, Mobile Learning, Informal Learning Flow, Communities and Networks Connection. The goal of a topic hub is to bring quality content together around particular topics to make it more accessible to people who are not familiar with the bloggers and other information sources in the space. If you look at AllTop itself, that's the value proposition they talk about as well – but using the magazine rack – casual browsing – metaphor.
But why MyAlltop?
What's confusing to me is the value of providing a means for person oriented topic hubs and the limitation to only feeds that already exist?
Are people going to adopt this as their new start page? Doubtful – there are much better tools for this. And MyAlltop forces everything to be public.
Instead, this is definitely a way for you to broadcast your interests. But, there are also lots of other ways to do this.
I really don't get this.
It must be on a trajectory towards something more like what's happening with Topic Hubs.
Thoughts?
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