Alltop, my Daily Newspaper 2.0

If you haven’t already discovered Alltop, you should check it out. When I first heard about Alltop, and all the buzz, I honestly figured it was just because web guru mastermind super rockstar uber-tweeter and general Geek Overlord Guy Kawasaki was involved. My first visit to the site, I thought it was just a page full of feeds. Uhh, yawn.

But here’s the creepy-weird thing that started happening. My Type-A Mom site was added to the Alltop Moms page, so I would pop in from time to time to see what’s happening. My About France Travel and Suite101 Family Adventures feeds were added onto the Alltop Travel page.

This was all evidence of just how accessible Guy is. I simply harassed him on Twitter or emailed him (after his open invitation for people to contact him to suggest sites).

Next thing I knew, I wasn’t even looking to see if my feed was there. I was hitting Alltop each morning to see what was happening in my pet topics like Moms, Dads, Travel, Social Media, SEO, etc. I started neglecting my hand-picked Bloglines feeds.

Then I realized what had happened. Alltop had become my 2.0 version of the daily newspaper (and I’ll get into why I ditched reading a daily print newspaper every morning in a future post).

I’m also not at all surprised that (I believe) Alltop just got its first Google PageRank, and it’s a 6.

In its simplicity — create pages that feature all the top feeds in particular categories — it has become indispensable. Genius. I can glance at the Moms page and, in a matter of a minute, have a broad feel for what’s happening with mommy bloggers.

Have you used Alltop? What are you thoughts? Do you find it useful, useless or just totally addictive?