Think like Guy Kawasaki or fall behind in the FUTURE of news sites
Thanks for visiting New Media Bytes. If you like what you see, subscribe to my RSS feed.
What will the news site of the future look like? No one can be sure - well, at least I can’t. But the execs deciding the future of news sites should take a hint from VC web startup enthusiast Guy Kawasaki, whose new venture Alltop capitalizes on what works for news site readers.
Although Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop.com hasn’t hit the prettiest strings with the Silicon Valley crowd, there’s plenty to learn from commenters on TechCrunch:
Says Mike Rundle:
I guess if you can’t think up good ideas, you just steal them from popurls and Web 2.0 Workgroup.
Exactly right! Except Kawasaki’s alltop.com isn’t exactly stealing. Alltop applies methods used by similar successful sites to deliver a new and usable product. News sites can do the same thing! - And be successful!
Alltop is a aggregation site that displays feeds of top-trusted sources for celebrities, egos (top bloggers), fashion, gaming, mac, oddities, politics, science and sports) in an easy-to-digest presentation. We created a similar layout for our local blog pages at MLive last summer. But MLive’s project hasn’t been significantly promoted and haven’t taken off.
Still, Alltop may be just what readers are seeking.
Alltop is nothing new. I can just collect feeds in my reader and get the same result
YES! You can just aggregate all of your top reads in your feed reader. But the majority of web users don’t know what RSS is. A 2005 Pew Internet & American Life project study found only 5 percent of web users use feed readers.
For some news sites getting overly excited about the monetizing ramifications of feeds and this and that with RSS, here’s a suprise - the bulk of your readers are likely NOT using RSS and feeds.
Which is precisely why Kawasaki’s borrowed model can work. Says Kawasaki to ValleyZen:
Our market is people who don’t know what NetVibes and iGoogle or My Yahoo - dont know what a feed is. It’s so nice to just go someplace and have all 35 top celebrity gossip sites laid out for you.
The FUTURE of news web site design - Simplicity
Every news site in the world is thinking side design and usability and redesign - and if your news site isn’t, better put a bug in their ear. If you’re not innovating, your not growing. If you’re not growing, you’re dieing. If you’re dieing, you’re looking for a new job.
My advice - take a step back and think about what the readers want (even if they don’t know what they want). Sure people like big photos and interesting videos. But what web news readers really want is interesting stories. They want to get the news at a glance. They don’t want to spend time hunting for the news that interests them. And web site users want a SIMPLE process to finding it all!
If your site isn’t usable, your readers will go to some place that is.
We don’t try to load things up. We have one strip of photos for visual interest. It doens’t look like just a bunch of crap up there.”
Exactly.
Your next homepage / section pages
What would happen if your next homepage or section page employed an index of story feeds - and I’m talking only story feeds? Would readers revolt? Would they like the choices? I’d guess a site that integrates more RSS story feeds and less gobblygook would make readers’ lives a lot easier.
Check out these sites that have made Alltop’s model successful:
- PopURLs - Top interesting stories from Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Flickr and more (great Twitter account too!)
- iGoogle - Integrates with your Google account, allows you to create multiple homepages by category where you aggregate the story feeds you want to see
- My Yahoo - Similar to iGoogle, but for Yahoo
- OriginalSignal - Covering similar topics to Alltop but with a cool latest stories frontpage
- Web 2.0 Workgroup - Feeds aggregation on everything Web 2.0
- Netvibes - similar to iGoogle, but allows you to integrate more accounts than just your Google identities
- PageFlakes - Very similar to iGoogle, received plenty of buzz
- Spotback - Similar to Pageflakes, allows you to create your own homepage of feeds
- MLive.com’s local blogs pages (shameless plug)
- Digesty - Food stories in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles
What do you think?
Has Kawasaki hit on something? Do you use any of the mentioned sites to get your news? Do you really dig through inside sections of news sites, or do you use feedreaders? How do you think your users would like to find information?
My last word - simplicity is essential in news site design, think like Kawasaki.
If you've enjoyed this post, please subscribe to the New Media Bytes RSS feed.
February 10th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Hi Shawn,
I am one of those people who use NetVibes and del.ious.us etc. i’ve been using it for about 3-4 months, and now I have so many feeds that it is starting to look like a bunch of crap!
Even if you love RSS, you can’t possibly everything. Alltop is great for finding sites that you don’t visit on a regular basis, and in that way, it’s a useful adjunct to the NV/iGoogle browsing experience.
Also it gets me that in this day and age some sites still don’t use RSS! What’s that about??
February 10th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Hi Shawn — Superb overview on Alltop. You selected a great quote from my Valley Zen video interview with Guy.
Zen simplicity was the theme.
On another note, kudos to you for your great work post Katrina. Wanted to share with you my original silk scroll painting, a tribute to the spirit of New Orleans post Katrina:
http://www.drue.net/jazz-paintings-second-line-new-orleans.htm
February 10th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
My first reaction when I saw this earlier this week was, “yeah, I get that in my feed reader. Next.”
But what I missed was that Alltop really isn’t for me, but for regular readers who just might enjoy a feed reader-like experience. In that light, it’s nicely done.
My only question is what’s the business model? Does Guy plan to include advertising at some point?
February 10th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Thanks for the coverage and comments. We think that if we get enough traffic, we can sell 125 x 125 spots in the feeds. Or, there will be “sponsored” feeds at the top of the page ala Google’s sponsored links.
But until we have traffic, this is just a theory.
Thanks,
Guy
February 10th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
[…] Your page is on StumbleUpon […]
February 10th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Looking after a similar market is tiinker. A lot of people don’t want or know how to put in the effort to customise a feed list or homepage. tiinker is personalised news — stories are drawn from news and blog sites and the system learns what topics you’re interested in, filtering and exploring to bring you the good stuff.
http://tiinker.com
February 11th, 2008 at 1:03 am
[…] Think like Guy Kawasaki or fall behind in the FUTURE of news sites. And speaking of alltop.com, Shawn Smith thinks there’s a lesson for newspapers from alltop’s Guy Kawasaki. […]
February 12th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Interesting way to launch a new site: article on web strategist. Another blog post on the topic. Reader comments are interesting! Update:another link, and a quote: .. Our market is people who don’t know what NetVibes and iGoogle or My Yahoo are … Technology development has become simple enough for an interesting idea to be launched in just a few hours. What will the future be like?
February 14th, 2008 at 6:28 am
@Shawn, popurls.com is good, but i prefer http://needfornews.com
they give tag cloud, so you dont need to read all titles to understand wtf s going today
February 14th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Oh cool, nice layout. thanks Nickie
March 10th, 2008 at 11:57 am
[…] are also on there. Pretty neat stuff. I wrote a post about alltop a few weeks ago how I think Alltop is the future of news sites. Still believing it, too! Nice that you’re favicon is working - for some reason I have a […]