Alltop is an “online magazine rack” of popular topics. We update the stories every hour. Pick a topic by searching, news category, or name, and we’ll deliver it to you 24 x7. All the topics, all the time.

The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you.

You may wonder how Alltop is different from a search engine. A search engine is good to answer a question like, “How many people live in China?” However, it has a much harder time answering the question, “What’s happening in China?” That’s the kind of question that we answer.

We do this by collecting the headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic. We group these collections — “aggregations” — into individual web pages. Then we display the five most recent headlines of the information sources as well as their first paragraph. Our topics run from adoption to zoology with photography, food, science, religion, celebrities, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, Macintosh, and hundreds of other subjects along the way.

You can think of Alltop as the “online magazine rack” of the web. We’ve subscribed to thousands of sources to provide “aggregation without aggravation.” To be clear, Alltop pages are starting points—they are not destinations per se. Ultimately, our goal is to enhance your online reading by displaying stories from sources that you’re already visiting plus helping you discover sources that you didn’t know existed.

1. Q. How do the Alltop sites work?  A. We import the stories of the top news websites and blogs for any given topic and display the headlines of the five most recent stories (except Moms.alltop which has fewer headlines because there are so many feeds). When you place the cursor over a headline, we display part of the story so that you can decide if you’d like to read it. To read the story, click on its title. To go to the home page of the site, click on its domain name.
2. Q. How can I see the topics that you cover?  A. There are four ways you can easily find a topic in which you are interested:
   

   • Enter a term in Search Topics to find topics related to the term.
   • Choose a category to view all related topics.
   • Click a letter to view alphabetically.
   • View every topic alphabetically on one page.

   If you still can’t find something, then please visit our suggestion form.

3. Q. How often do you update the feeds?  A. Approximately once an hour.
4. Q. How do you decide which sites and blogs are in a topic? A. We use a patent-pending, semantic computational algorithm derived from the post-doctoral work of Guy at Stanford. Just kidding. We rely on several sources: results of Google searches, review of the sites’ and blogs’ content, researchers, and our “gut” plus the recommendations of the Twitter community, owners of the sites and blogs, and people who care enough to write to us. Let us declare something: The Twitter community has been the single biggest factor in the quality of Alltop. Without this group of mavens and connectors, Alltop would not be what it is today.
5. Q. How do you decide on the order?  A. An even more complex algorithm:

   Some sites and blogs bring us credibility. For example, Politics.alltop.com has to display the Washington Post fairly near the top. If it were missing or far down the page, we’d expect a first-time visitor to question our quality.

   If you’ve gotten the impression that Alltop is not based on computer algorithms or popular voting, you’d be right. We are highly subjective and judgmental.

6. Q. Some of my favorite sites are not included, how do I get you to add them?  A. Make the suggestion through our submission form. Please note: if your favorite sites don’t provide an RSS feed, we cannot import their stories. And please, tell us what topic you hope to see them in.
7. Q. Why does the order of feeds sometimes change? A. If our server cannot get a site’s stories in a reasonable time, we skip it, and go on to the next one.
8. Q. What if I want to customize what sites are displayed or the order of the feeds? A. By clicking on the “x” next to the feed’s name, you can hide that feed. If you want to get it back, click on “Restore” in the menu bar. We may make Alltop more customizable in the future, but we know that this is something a few people will ask for, and nobody will use.
9. Q. Couldn’t I build my own custom aggregation using a feed reader, customizable home pages, Netvibes, etc? A. Yes, you could—knock yourself out. While you’re at it, you could backup your hard disk, bake your own bread, iron your own shirts, floss daily, tune your own car, and bike to work.
10. Q. How do I suggest an additional topic?  A. Make the suggestion through our suggestion form.
11. Q. How can I advertise on an Alltop site or sponsor the whole thing? A. Please see our Advertising page.
12. Q. What’s your business model?  A. See immediately above. Source: Alltop

“It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure” Clay Shirky

Topic: Search Engines with Phonetic Names

Examples:

Cuil (not cool)

Nsyght (not insight)

Voyij (not voyage)

Spezify (not specify)

Cookstr (not cookster)

DeepDyve (not deepdive)

Growyn (not grown)

FeedMil (not feedmill)

Yureekah (not eureka)

Your short paper, 500 – 1,000 words, should argue for or against the wisdom of choosing names such as listed above.

Especially wanted are: VPs of Marketing for search engines, C-level (e.g. CMO or CEO) of same, or representatives of search engines at PR firms.

Deadline Extended to end of day Monday, June 1st, 2009. (our anniversary)

Best entries will be posted as part of our third year celebration the week of June 1st.

Submit text only via email or attachment to: charles@altsearchengines.com