Does Alltop sound the death knell for blog subscription or an end to being b(l)ogged down?
Welcome to my blog, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I recently blogged about Travel Alltop and how I think it’s great to have the most recent post headlines of the leading travel blogs on a single site. This set me thinking that there’s now no need to subscribe to blogs on your favourite topics if you can just skim down the topic page on Alltop.
I may be shot down in flames for such heresy by many bloggers for whom one definition of the success of their blog is measured by the number of RSS subscribers proudly displayed on their blogs. I’m looking at it from the readers’ perspective. Why be b(l)ogged down with all the posts from several blogs when you can easily and simply pick and mix what takes your fancy on the Alltop topic page? You could argue that reading the most recent post titles of the 60 or so travel blogs featured in Alltop Travel will increase information overload.
I suppose this is going to put even more pressure on bloggers to come up with zappy post titles to attract readers. Will it force we bloggers to come up with consistent excellent posts for readers to become subscribers to ensure they never miss any of our riveting posts?
I’ve never been too obsessed by my subscriber numbers. I look at my overall blog stats. Of course all we bloggers would love to have regular readers but you can have regular readers who aren’t subscribers. I still believe if I produce interesting, informative and entertaining contents I’ll get readers. It’s great that readers now have more choice in how they access blogs.
Will you still continue to subscribe to your favourite blogs? Are fellow bloggers concerned about the possible decline in subscribers?
April 10th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Alltop is a very very small sample of all blogs. Moreover, it isn’t a convenient as having everything I want in one package via an RSS reader.
I’d say that half of the blogs I subscribe to are not on Alltop and never will be.
At best it is a way to explore and discover new sites.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Gary, I’d say Alltop has more than a very small sample of travel blogs. If there’s any blog feed you’d like to see on the site you can email Alltop to request inclusion.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Ever since I’ve discovered Alltop, I’ve been avoiding my RSS feeds — particularly when it comes to staying updating with web activity. I find them to be messy and are an overload of information. Having said that, I still look at them when I can because of the number of other blogs I subscribe to that are not on Alltop. My first source is definitely Alltop though!
April 10th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I’m with you Abha in that I much prefer using Alltop to RSS feeds. You should email Alltop with details of the blogs you think worth of inclusion
April 10th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
You can only put so many RSS feeds on a page before it gets unmanageable. Many of the sites I read read are just small travelogues. Likewise, there are many niche subjects that would never warrant a section of their own. It is fine for covering the big sites for major areas, but could never cover all the web.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
That’s true Gary there will always be niche blogs. I’m really mainly focusing on Travel Alltop as my professional interest lies there. Still a small travelogue could become popular if it gained exposure on Travel Alltop.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Sure, but there are literally thousands of them. There are at least 20 different travel blog hosting sites that I know of and thousands of gap year kids from the UK alone. There are millions of websites. Alltop just has the biggest and best. That is why it is Alltop.
Also, it only gives the headlines of the RSS feeds, not full text. I like having the fulltext available to me in a reader. Noting having to click on every article saves a lot of time.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
What I’d like to see is the plumbing behind Alltop made accessible/customizable so I can use it instead of RSS - it’s so much easier to read and/or browse the blogs than my RSS feeds.
My teeny tiny blog got listed on Alltop and I have seen an increase in traffic, but it will be interesting to see if it lasts. If Alltop becomes an credible aggregation of travelblogs, I imagine my traffic will continue to grow. If it’s just a temporary spike, I imagine that’s because Alltop is in the news… and my blog isn’t worthy. :)
April 10th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
I still prefer to manage RSS feeds in iGoogle for topics that are of greatest personal interest. While Alltop has a decent volume per category, it’s too broad to get particularly deep within individual subjects. That said, there were a few additional travel blogs they included that I hadn’t heard of before and have since subscribed.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Pam - I do also wonder if the traffic referrals from Travel Alltop will continue. My feeling is that they will increase as Alltop becomes better known and more popular with blog readers. I’m sure that your blog is worthy of inclusion.
Pete - Yes Alltop is a good source for finding new blogs ( if you have the time to read even more blogs!) I’m sure blog readers will have their own preference for the method of delivery of their favoured blogs.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
[...] I’m not sure if readers want to subscribe to blogs and receive every post leading to being b(l)ogged down by information overload. I also think that many readers aren’t aware of blog subscription. [...]