Happy Hotelier Syndicated at Travel.Alltop

Alltop Logo

Recently I saw referrals coming in from Travel.Alltop.

According to its Blog Travel.Alltop was launched on March 28, 2008. They thanked Gary Arndt, Chris Holdren, Glenn James, Paul Sanchez, Sheila Scarborough and Jen Leo. Since I don’t happen to know these people, I more or less wonder how I got on their shortlist.

Wat is Alltop?

Alltop is a site syndicating links from “all the top” sites on the web on various subjects. They divide them in single aggregated pages on topics such as:

To name a few of my favorite subjects.

I believe they should create architecture as well

Each page has 30 plus, each with 5 posts. Some of the Travel collection (now 61) I do know well to very well, some are new to me.

Its design is really Zen like.

About Alltop

It was Launched on March 12, 2008 See: Announcement

The people behind Alltop are also behind Truemors, subtitled “Breaking Rumors”. They were inspired by Popurl when they realized Popurl were sending them a lot of traffic.

Alltop and Treumors are owned by Nononina

It is “two guys and a gal” in a garage—or more accurately, one guy in home office (Will Mayall), one gal on a kitchen table (Kathryn Henkens), and one Guy in United 2B (Guy Kawasaki). They’ve been working together since the previous century and are still friends. If you can figure out the origin of the name “Nononina,” Guy will send you a free copy of The Art of the Start.

Their Strange Banner

From their FAQ

Q. What’s with the banner near the bottom of the page? Is that a bug?

A. You fail the test. We put the banner there on purpose. We wanted to flip convention on its head by reversing the positions of the header and footer. Our (tiny) header is everyone else’s footer, and our footer is everyone else’s header. We did this to emphasize that “content is the top priority” at Alltop, not our brand identity. Also, the translucent banner contains a pun: “We’ve got [topic] covered.” Get it? Though we never planned it this way, some people also use it as a page marker to keep track of where they are on a page since the banner remains stationary and you scroll the headlines.

Why Alltop and not Netvibes?
Another funny comment in their FAQ:

Q. Couldn’t I build my own custom aggregation using a feed reader, customizable home pages, Netvibes, etc?

A. Yes, you could—knock yourself out. While you’re at it, you could backup your hard disk, bake your own bread, iron your own shirts, floss daily, tune your own car, and bike to work.

.

The Connection

In digging a bit further I believe I found the connection: Trendhunter

Here is a picture of Guy Kawasaki I found on Trendhunter:

Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki

His Blog is titled How to Change The World. It featured Trendhunter a year ago (ha ha and he added Trendhunters’ Dutch competitor Springwise as an afterthought. I’ll explain my laugh in a separate post). And off course Trendhunter featured Alltop. An interview with him can be found here.

Let’s see how it develops.

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