Results Count ... everything else is conversation.: It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.

If your email is overflowing … Alltop maybe your answer

Ok, you’ve made the commitment to stay current on your industry by subscribing to newsletters, blogs and smartbriefs. Now when your pour that first cup of coffee you cringe as you open email. It becomes daunting to even begin drudging through 50, 100 or more emails waiting in your inbox! How can you keep up to speed without suffering information overload? Alltop might just be the intelligence filter you are looking for.

A better way to efficiently organize knowledge sources

At IMS, we consistently tout that our clients and connections need to get out of their comfort zone and read more industry intelligence. We just completed another Retail University this week and showcased all of the FREE information available via “smartbriefs”, blogs and newsletters.

We subscribe to many newsletters and most of these arrive on a daily basis and overload email inboxes. I often wonder how many newsletters that are actually read on a daily basis. Or do they get deleted because the user just wants to get their email inbox cleaned out? Worse yet, if this good information continues to clutter your email box, do you just give up and unsubscribe?

The key to business and market intelligence is having the stuff at your fingertips, when you need it, where you can find it. IMS staff has found an answer to organizing and managing this type of current information efficiently through a dashboard type filtering service called Alltop.

Alltop = The answer to the overflowing inbox!

Are you asking what Alltop is? It is a filter to help find the information that is important to you. Alltop stands for “All the top stories”. The title of this blog is actually from a quote by Clay Shirky that appears at the top of Alltop’s about page. The reference to filtering intelligence is a great summary of what Alltop is … and its value for busy professionals.

You might compare Alltop to an ‘online magazine rack’. Alltop follows thousands of sources to provide up-to-date information, sorted in a logical topical way for their members. Ultimately, the objective is to get the user to access more information online by displaying stories and sources of their choice, while introducing hundreds of other sources they didn’t know were out there.

Alltop = Your own customized intelligence dashboard

The Alltop user interface is easy and everyone can customize their own profile page with only the sources / feeds they want.

To be clear, Alltop is NOT a Bing or Google. It is not intended to be a search engine. It is a starting point interface to take the user to the stories and key sources of their interest. Today, there are over 32,000 possible source connections in Alltop. Whatever major newsletters or topical sources you receive in email, they are likely to be found on Alltop. The feeds are updated on an hourly basis, which is faster than most can get through their email. Best of all, once the user is connected, they can unsubscribe to the newsletter thereby immediately reducing email clutter.

Alltop is owned by Nononina and was co-founded by three interesting people; Will Mayall, Kathryn Henkens and Guy Kawasaki. The founders are focused on simple and easy. While there are other tools available, Alltop is extremely attractive for a variety of reasons:

It covers the major professional and industry sources
Alltop has a wide range of hobbies and special interests
Every subscriber can create their own customized view
You select the categories and the sources / feeds
It’s EASY … and it’s FREE!

But wait … there is more … Business plus pleasure!

Yes, you can find the majority of the key newsletters that you follow for business. In the case of retail for example, NRF and CEA Smartbriefs (for that matter all of the Smartbriefs are available). There are many sources for Social Media, Sales, Small Business, as well as specific companies.

To our surprise, Alltop does not currently include a specific Retail category, although there are a lot of sources that would fit in that section. However, users can make request to add both categories as well as specific sources they want to follow. We will work on convincing Alltop to add a specific Retail category and showing them its value.

As a busy, traveling professional I found it impossible to keep up on industry news and my personal passion of photography. There are many “passion” categories on Alltop, including sports and hobbies. So my Alltop dashboard is customized with both the business of retail and the top photography blogs and news. Best part is that if I have a busy day, the most recent posts are simply waiting for me when I can get to them without the hassle of cleaning email.

Is Alltop for you? Go kick the tires with a test drive!

NO … we don’t get a commission for recommending Alltop. We were simply blown away by ease of use. Having your own personal intelligence dashboard is not only cool, but a major time saver!!!

If you need more information on Alltop … watch their video, we think you will be converted. Still need some convincing? Go view a couple of profiles of “celebrities” to see how they are using Alltop:

Adam Engst of TidBITS. My.alltop.com/adamengst
Beth Blecherman of Silicon Valley Moms. My.alltop.com/bethblecherman
Dave Winer of RSS and Scripting News. My.Alltop.com/davewiner
Pam Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation. My.alltop.com/pamslim
Tony Hsieh of Zappos. My.alltop.com/zappos

Results Count … IMS is proud to now be listed on Alltop!

This is the 217th weekly post for IMS Results Count. That’s over 4 years of writing about topics related to retail, metrics, measurement … and sometimes just important topics of conversation. We appreciate all of our loyal readers and their comments. But we also just reached a very significant results milestone … IMS Results Count has been recognized as a blog of sufficient quality to be officially listed on Alltop.

Yes you read that right; IMS is now proud a member of Alltop! As you set up your Alltop profile don’t forget to select Results Count … everything else is conversation. You will find us in Alltop under the Work / Sales group area.

Let us know what tools you use to clean out your email box inbox and manage your business intelligence: