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Consumer Web 2.0 App Reviews and Social Web Conversations

Where’s My Toluu Enthusiasm?

Posted by Corvida On April - 21 - 2008

toluu Have you heard about Toluu? Toluu is a great way to find others with similar reading interests to your own and discover new blogs to subscribe to. The concept is pretty neat. Why wouldn’t I want to see what other blogs my friends are reading? It helps me keep up with the conversations on the web (and Twitter) and is a great way to find more interesting content. You can follow me on Toluu here.

Despite how I feel about the concept, the actual product doesn’t inspire much enthusiasm in me. Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly recommend the service to anyone who’s interested in the concept behind it. The developers of Toluu are doing a great job running the service and the community is active. Still, there are a few things that keep me from delving deep into it the service.
        

Too Many Clicks

One of the few problems that keeps me from delving into Toluu is that there are too many clicks. If I want to see what a feed has to offer, I have to click on the feed to see the articles. While this is great and shouldn’t be remodeled in any way, I’d like the ability to be able to see the title of a feeds articles, or a tag line for feeds, before I click on them. This would save me a lot of time and hassle with my quest for new feeds to read.
    

Trouble Recommending Feeds

For my friends that I know, it’s not that hard to recommend a blog to subscribe to. However, for those that I’m just beginning to connect with, this is a tricky thing because I don’t know them as well. On top of that, people are picky about what they read (I know I am). I wish that Toluu could utilize their match algorithm to rank which friends might find a particular feed interesting that I have subscribed to.

     

More Than Enough Potential

Toluu has a massive amount of potential to be a hit and in some ways, it already is. However, some of their features require more interaction than I have time to spare. The amount of clicks that one might have to make can be a huge downer, especially when you’re short on time. These are just a few recommendations on what could help me to become a more active Toluu user. Do you have any suggestions?

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  • Cableston,

    Now you're part of the conversation, I would suggest you try to focus on making Toluu more intuitive. Right now, it requires an investment (time) to get value from it. It needs to be easier to use. A robust FAQ would be a step in the right direction.
  • Mike, you are absolutely right. One of the things we will do before launching publicly is expanding the FAQ as well as some sort of tour that explains what Toluu does and why it is useful.

    Is there a particular part of the app that took a lot of time to grok?
  • Sorry to be late to the conversation, was traveling yesterday.

    Thank you so much for the fantastic feedback guys. We are still in our private beta and working to get Toluu ready for primetime. We continue to release updates almost everyday.

    Corvida, I agree that there a certainly UI and interaction improvements to make to Toluu. We agree that some items are a bit too far removed and we are working to balance the instant availability of the info you want vs. the clutter of too many items on the page.

    We are working to find other ways to keep your feeds in sync with your feed reader. We know this is one of the most important things to use Toluu effectively.

    We also know that the matching can be slow for users with more than a few hundred feeds. We are working to correct this and increase the speed for the site in general.
  • rambn
    Is there anyone Toluu that likes cycling/running/adventure sport blogs? I have no matches. :(
  • We're all on our computers too much. Twitter might be helpful for finding
    individuals with more outdoor interests.
  • One of the things I hate about Toluu is that as non-user, they're no way of getting to the real RSS feed. I don't want to subscribe in Toluu, I want to subscribe in my regular RSS reader.

    http://www.toluu.com/feeds/550748196
    http://www.toluu.com/feeds/686740725

    On top of that, there's a © ELSTONIA at the bottom of every page... but the contents of the page is most definitely not © ELSTONIA, it's © Chris Brogan / ReadWriteWeb in the examples I gave.

    The other fun thing: because these feeds use FeedBurner, there isn't even a link back to the originating website without going through FeedBurner. So if I didn't understand what Feed Burner was, I wouldn't know where the content is coming from.

    One way Toluu can solve these issues is by letting the content creators claim their feeds, letting people opt-out of Toluu, and letting them write their own profiles/copyright notices for their feed pages.
  • I never even noticed that! Looks like they better start doing some link backs!
  • Hutch Carpenter
    Sarah - I now regularly go through the "Add to Toluu" button on my browser when adding new blogs. They're added to Toluu, then I land on the add to Google Reader page. That's how I'm staying in sync.
  • I actually had a problem where Firefox was blocking the "pop-up" Toluu was doing for opening the Google Reader subscribe screen. For some reason, even though "block pop-ups" was turned off, when I clicked the "Add to Toluu" button the new window would be blocked. I think it was a Firefox thing, but I didn't have time to troubleshoot, hence why I just started subscribing the old-fashioned way an am now out of sync (or was - I just re-uploaded my OPML to Toluu).
  • I'm doing the same, but sometimes I forget to do this and I'd rather give the original site the click, not Toluu.
  • I like Toluu and check it out about once or twice a week - but I agree that the execution could use some more polish. Still - it's a great place to find new things to read, but I would prefer it built into a feedreader. It seems more like a feature to me than a full blown product.
  • I still like Toluu a lot, but I have added a bunch of feeds outside of Toluu and now I have to re-upload my OPML...I wish there was a way to keep them in sync. Still, I've discovered a bunch of great feeds via the site, and I still love it for what it's doing.
  • You have a reply from bhc3.
  • It's definitely a great recommendation engine. I just wish it were easier to
    get those recommendations, and yes, synchronization of feeds is definitely a
    problem! I hope they're be something to fix this soon.
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