What is Alltop?

The other day I mentioned that Clay Collins made it on Alltop's Lifehack page. I didn't do a great job of explaining what Alltop was then, but I wanted to take a second and do so now.

Alltop has provided such a great explanation of what they do that I'll just give a sample from them:

You can think of an Alltop site as a "dashboard," "table of contents," or even a "digital magazine rack" of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points - they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you're already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn't know existed. In this way, our goal is the "cessation of Internet stagnation."

The way I've related to Alltop is that they're much like the New York Times Bestseller List. They do the work to find good reads from different niches and help readers find those sites by displaying them on a single, aggregated page that lists the latest five stories on those sites. It's a great way to check out your interests without managing a ton of blogs and sites.

What I like is that they really do help people discover new sites. Rather than just focusing on the old and known sites and blogs, they give new quality blogs a chance, since they have the expressed goals to "shake things up and urge people out of their comfort zones", promote "sites that provide such high-quality information that we feel it's our moral duty to tell the world about them," and "help out underdogs and undiscovered gems."

As a case in point, they've added Productive Flourishing to their Lifehacks page. They have really stuck out their collective neck for me, and I really, really appreciate it.

If you have a minute, run over and check Alltop out.

Will, Kathryn, and Guy - thanks for adding me to the Alltop family!