Toluu Looking Like a Real Winner

Being part of an entrepreneur's launch of a new service is exciting. If I get early access to a product, and think it has real potential, it can be as if in some small way, I'm part of the site's launch team, and every little element of success they recognize makes me feel like I chose well. Sometimes, I really do worry that I'm wearing my early adopter hat so tight that it could be cutting off oxygen to my brain. But with the launch of Toluu ten days behind us, I can easily report the initial response has been more than I could have anticipated for the upstart Caleb Elston and his socially-oriented OPML sharing site.

After my initial coverage of the site last Monday, Caleb's site was almost immediately overwhelmed by eager testers who wanted their hands on the new offering. In the last ten days, Toluu's servers were upgraded, not just once, but twice, as the site saw hundreds of new users pour in, each adding anywhere from a handful to hundreds of their own RSS feeds, forcing Toluu to pull down thousands upon thousands of new items, and using its matching algorithm to crunch the data and help users find new friends and feeds.

(See: Toluu Blog: Toluu gets new server infrastructure)

The growth wasn't all due to my comments, of course. Despite what some say, I'm still very small compared with more brand name sites. The Toluu buzz turned into a roar last week following positive reviews from Allen Stern at Center Networks (Toluu Helps You Like What Your Friends Like) and Sarah Perez at Read Write Web (10 Reasons Why You're Going to Love Toluu). Toluu even gained a position in TechCrunch's CrunchBase company listings. (CrunchBase: Toluu)

Like most new entrants to the market, Toluu has some rough edges. But, like the best innovators, the service responds to user feedback extremely quick. On Tuesday, Caleb introduced two new features he says were the most popular requested features: First, generating an RSS feed or your activity on the site and secondly, delivering an RSS feed for the activity of both you and your friends. As he commented in a blog post, "Now your Toluu activity; the feeds you add, the feeds you favorite, the people you connect with, is now completely portable."

Caleb even chose to highlight the import and activity process using a screenshot which added louisgray.com to his feed lists as the example - no doubt in an attempt to get me to write about it (which apparently worked). Of note, the CrunchBase screenshot has a little louisgray.com touch to it as well (See here).

Sometimes, a site's potential for success is apparent immediately, and sometimes it takes a little more time. Toluu looks like a hit that's spreading virally as bloggers sign in, find new friends and keep talking it up. If he's not careful, Caleb could find himself preparing for yet another server upgrade in the near term.

If you haven't yet jumped on the Toluu bandwagon, there's still time, and I have plenty of highly sought-after invites, so post a comment and get one, or send me an e-mail.

TechMeme Leaderboard's Top Ten: Six Months In

Gabe Rivera turned the world of ranking technology blogs upside down six months ago, seemingly overnight, with the debut of the TechMeme leaderboard, constituting the top 100 blog or news sources whose posts reached the popular site in the prior 30 day period.

A more focused and relevant measurement of a tech-oriented site's momentum and impact than the flaccid Technorati Top 100, the TechMeme leaderboard has already undergone significant change in the six months since its debut, as new sites emerged near the bottom. But in large part, the largest sites solidified their positions at the top, not yielding ground, and in the specific case of TechCrunch, increased their percentage of stories, expanding the gap between first and second place.

Utilizing the TechMeme leaderboard's archive pages for its debut and each of the following six months, our source data is:

• October 1, 2007 snapshot
  
• November 1, 2007 snapshot
  
• December 1, 2007 snapshot
  
• January 1, 2008 snapshot
  
• February 1, 2008 snapshot
  
• March 1, 2008 snapshot
  
• April 1, 2008 snapshot

TechMeme Leaderboard: The Top Ten

Of the original Top 10 sites ranked on the TechMeme leaderboard, six have maintained a top 10 position in each snapshot at the beginning of the month, with TechCrunch maintaining the #1 overall position in each month since the leaderboard was made public. In fact, those holding the top five positions today (TechCrunch, CNET News.com, New York Times, Read/Write Web and Ars Technica) have never been placed lower than #7 overall. (Read/Write Web was positioned at #7 from December 2007 to February 2008)

Outside of these elite sites, there has been some movement with the original ten leaders. Engadget, the original #2 overall source, has fallen to the #11 overall position in April, while GigaOM plummeted from #7 overall in October down to #20 in November, only now crawling back to the #10 position. The BBC, ranked 8th in the original survey, has been mired in the teens, before falling precipitously to #29 overall this month. Also, the Wall Street Journal, which owned the #10 spot back in October of 2007, slipped as low as #23 overall in January before recovering, where it holds the #13 spot now.

In their places, a number of other blogs and traditional media sites have at times clawed their way into the Top Ten, sometimes just for one month, and other times, longer.

• November saw InfoWorld, the Associated Press and Silicon Alley Insider rank #8 - #10.
  
• December saw Computerworld and Reuters take the place of AP and InfoWorld at #9 and #10, with SAI bumping to #8.
  
• January saw Gizmodo debut at #6 (from #12 and #54 in prior months)
  
• February saw paidContent.org jump to #8 from #22 and #21.
  
• March saw no new entrants in the top ten.
  
• April now shows VentureBeat at the #8 spot, from #15 and #18 in the last two months.

TechMeme Leaderboard: Percentage of Stories

TechCrunch has always had the leading position on the TechMeme leaderboard, with about 1 of every 16 stories coming from Michael Arrington's popular blog. But TechCrunch's percentage of stories on TechMeme has never been as high as it is now.

When the rankings debuted, TechCrunch was credited with 5.56% of the prior 30 days' stories, and Engadget was relatively close behind, with 4.84% over the same timeframe. By the following month, TechCrunch increased to 6.08% of the total, and expanded again, to 6.86% by December 1.


While the gap between TechCrunch and the second-highest position was closest in the March snapshot (6.14% for TC and 5.8% for CNET News.com), it looks to have been a one-time blip. In the ensuing month, TechCrunch jumped to 7.17% of all TechMeme stories, while CNET fell back to 4.57%, still good for the #2 overall position. Effectively TechCrunch grew their lead over the field from a 6% gap to 57%, a nine-fold increase.

The weight of the top ten ranked sites on the other 90 is interesting as well. Starting with the October rankings, the top ten sites encompassed over 27.5% of the stories on TechMeme. That number has grown to 31.29 percent in the April snapshot, and has been in the 30 percent range for the duration. With the top ten holding down about 30% of stories, that leaves the other 90 entrants, and not to mention the hundreds of other sites that may have made TechMeme sporadically in the last six months, to fight over the other 70% of stories.


April's data shows the other 70 entrants on the TechMeme leaderboard constituted 42.35 percent of the stories in the prior month. Combined with the top ten, fully three quarters of all TechMeme headlines were from the 100 sites that encompass the leaderboard, with one quarter coming from additional sources.

Is the Leaderboard Relevant?

The higher the positioning on the TechMeme leaderboard, the more accurate the rankings become, in my opinion. There's no question that TechCrunch enjoys the largest voice in the tech blogosphere, and has for some time. As the site adds more writers and posts with more frequency, it is extremely likely that the network can continue to grow and take share from competition with less funding or resources. Some have called for a TechMeme without traditional media, such as the New York Times or Associated Press, but the truth is that traditional media continues to have a voice and is relevant, starting discussions and getting bloggers to link.

While this data shows the top ten positions have a significant voice, I believe it's accurate. ReadWriteWeb, Engadget, Ars Technica, and News.com all have significant weight today. Even as we may at times instead enjoy the work of individual bloggers like Mathew Ingram, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel or Steven Hodson, none of us have enough time and juice to take down the big blog networks, and so we are destined to play a role somewhere in the middle of TechMeme's leaderboard, or down a few rungs of the ladder.

The data also tells us that while the top ten players command about a third of the attention on TechMeme, there is the same amount of room available for those not even in the top 100. With good content, and good linkage from others, reaching TechMeme is available to anyone. While Gabe's algorithms are a well-kept secret, it's unquestioned that the data is driven mathematically, and doesn't smack of human intervention to push one site's stories over another.

It's been an interesting six months for the TechMeme leaderboard. In this time its moved from an intellectual curiosity to a respected measure of influence. It should be fun to check back in six or twelve months from now and see what's changed.

How You Handle the Information Overload Is Up to You

This morning, AideRSS introduced an interesting tool that lets you filter your RSS feeds in Google Reader, flagging only those which have been deemed most important, thanks to criteria you set. (Get your invite codes here and see Read/Write Web's coverage)

The concept behind a filter like this is to help you tackle information overload by showing a subset of your feeds, highlighting only those which have gained attention by others, through AideRSS' unique approach, tabulating total number of comments, del.icio.us links, Google links, Diggs, etc. (See our coverage from December) But to me, while I definitely like what AideRSS is trying to do, I don't necessarily want what I read to be determined by the actions of others. I want to be the one who decides, based on the content of an item, if it's something I want to have interest in, to read in full, to share, to comment, or link to. And I would assume that as AideRSS needs some time to populate the attention graph, it would only become most useful as the time after initial publication increases.

When it comes to RSS feeds, many dread the number of items they wake up to each day.

Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins, a Mashable editor, in a comment on FriendFeed in response to one of my items, recently said, "Try waking up to about 700 unread inbox items and at least the same number of unread RSS items every morning (only after about 5 hours sleep)! Being an editor is tired work!"

And if it's not managed, it can be. Two weeks ago, I suggested a reader has 1-5 seconds to make a decision on an RSS item. But even if this is a challenge, I would rather be the one making the decision on a feed than letting software tell me what to read, or waiting for others to have already had their say before I get to news.

To me, automated filtering of content to show the most important items, such as that found in TechMeme, ReadBurner, RSSMeme, Feedheads and LinkRiver, is a great tool - because those algorithms are most frequently pointed at feeds I haven't subscribed to. Those robots can bring me new data from sources I don't hit every day. But when it comes to those feeds I've picked to read, you won't ever find me complaining about information overload. I love it. I look forward to new items in Google Reader. I look forward to seeing new items in FriendFeed and Twitter and new e-mail, both at home and at work.

You won't find me declaring RSS feed bankruptcy, or hitting "Mark all as read" in Google Reader. You won't find me complaining about having 100 or 1000 items to go through. As Robert Scoble has often said about Twitter, it's not who is followed the most, but who follows the most, and if I can choose to get the most amount of information in as quickly as possible, instead of waiting for others to tell me it's important, I've got an advantage. But if you are losing the battle against information overload, AideRSS and Google Reader have a strong tool. You can get yours here: http://gr.aiderss.com/?svblog

State of the Blog: March 2008 Recap

March 2008 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,266

Total stories published in March: 38
(About 1.2 per day, down from 1.4 in February)

Total stories in March with comments: 29
(76% of all stories, from 36 and 87% in February)

Total comments on March posts: 177
(About 4.6 per post, 6.1 per commented post)


Graphical representation of the site's increased reach...

Technorati Authority Ranking: 371 (up 110)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 827 subscribers (up 206)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 33 subscribers (up 7)
MyBlogLog Members: 93 (up 26)

Twitter Followers: 313 (Up 146)
FriendFeed Followers: 518 (Up 356)



Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12: 1st overall, by 33%.

Top Five Most Visited March Stories (According to Analog)

1. Elite Bloggers Joining FriendFeed In Droves
2. Duncan Riley Misses the Point of FriendFeed
3. 10 Suggestions for Google Reader, One Year Later
4. LinkedIn Company Detail Shows Silicon Valley Carousel
5. LinkRiver Embeds Shared Feed Stats, Attention Data

Others receiving votes: How I Found or Started Using A Dozen Web Services, 5 Blog Candidates for Tomorrow's TechMeme Leaderboard, I'm Not Reading and Engaging With Enough Female Bloggers, My iPod Touch is Rarely Used for Music, ReadBurner to Return With New Ownership, and Shyftr Offers Social RSS Reading, Including Comments, Rankings...

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Analog)

1. February 29th's Leap Day Robs Us All
2. MyBlogLog LifeStream Is a Quiet Trickle
3. Dealing With Offline Companies Can be Such a Pain
4. FriendFeed Opens Up, Raises $5 Million in Funding
5. Starts With B, Ends With N: Six Letters.

As March concludes, it makes me both more eager to see what April brings, and once again raises the bar for what's expected here at LouisGray.com. In March, we saw the world debut of Yokway, MergeLab, Shyftr, and Toluu. ReadBurner died, and then came back. FriendFeed graduated from plucky Web startup to a major force. And guess what? We're far from done, so stay tuned!

To keep on top of things, subscribe via RSS, via e-mail, follow me on Friendfeed or Twitter, or keep watch on our shared link blog!