As a whole I like Toluu. For more on Toluu check out the KnightKnetwork’s interview with Caleb Elston and Louis Gray’s first post about Toluu. Toluu the RSS feed sharing discovery application is a cool concept and does function pretty well. The integration to add a feed to your feed reader is great. But here are few problems I found and features I would like to see.
Speed, Speed, Speed – When you click on the matches tab it takes what seems like forever to change and display the matches. That is a crucial point in the application where it actually shows you intelligent matches of RSS feeds you would like. Displaying this main feature of the application needs to be much faster. I have had it take several minutes. Users can not deal with minutes it must display in seconds. From the Contacts view I click on Matches for one of my contacts and again it sluggish.
Redundancy – When the Matches tab does finally display it shows several users who “match” you and a percentage. You then see a list of “Feeds you might like” from each user. What is interesting is that one of the same feeds is displayed for every user. In my case the feeds “Micro Persuasion” and “GigaOm” are under 4 out of 5 users. This is redundancy that should somehow be eliminated. I have also seen redundancy in the same user where it shows the same feed twice.
Feed Elimination – If a feed exists that I am NOT interested in I would like the ability to exclude from future recommendation. If “Micro Persuasion” is not what I want to read it could be put on an exclusion list.
Toluu is beta and I am sure the application will grow and change. One thing I have been looking for is user enhancements in the form of greasemonkey scripts. This has already added a lot of functionality to FriendFeed.
I will add and subtract from list as the application changes.
By the way I still have invites if anyone is interested. Leave your email in a comment if you want one.
Hi Franklin,
You have pointed out two of the major issues we are working on right now.
Improving the matching speed is a major technology challenge and so we are working on some smart solutions. We need to crunch a great deal of data to make the matches and so we need to be smarter about how and when we process that data.
Regarding the duplicate items, once we saw an influx of different OPML files we saw how we needed to improve the importer to be more robust in how it handles different variations of the same feed. It is amazing how many feeds point to the same content!
So we have made improvements to the importer and now we are working on cleaning up the DB and merging the duplicate feeds, which will also improve the accuracy of the matching algorithm.
I think your idea of saying 'Not interested' is quite cool and will be going on our list!
Thanks again for your honest feedback and support of Toluu. We will certainly be making these improvements.
Caleb Elston
Toluu
I have tried Toluu a bit, but so far I remain mystified.
example: I imported by 400+ feeds via OPML from Google reader. I coninue adding (and ocassinally deleting) feeds at google. that means my Toluu data is out of date, (over time)
2: (I think) Toluu is NOT a feedreader. so if I discover an interesting feed, what do I do next? add it manually to my feedreader?
3. Toluu site needs a crisp “about” that explains the purpose of teh site, and lays out advantages. also needs a “how to use” so far it is a puzzle to me.
(I admit I have not invested much time so far).
http://twitter.com/RonKJeffries
Hi Ron,
Thanks for the constructive feedback. It is our fault for not communicating clearly the reasons why you would want to use Toluu. We have been so focused on making it work and fixing bugs that we have not invested enough time in explaining the service for new users. You will certainly see improvements in these areas as we continue to grow, and certainly before we open up to all users. We are currently invite only.
Toluu is not a feed reader. It is a utility that helps you discover interesting feeds and see what your friends and others actually read day-in and day-out.
On the import page we have a Bookmarklet you can use to seamlessly add feeds to Toluu and your feed reader of choice when you find a new interesting blog or feed. Also, when you add a feed from within Toluu we can automatically add it to your feed reader if you want to do so. We are still trying to figure out the best way to know when you remove feeds from your reader.
Cheers,
Caleb
Toluu
Hi Franklin,
You have pointed out two of the major issues we are working on right now.
Improving the matching speed is a major technology challenge and so we are working on some smart solutions. We need to crunch a great deal of data to make the matches and so we need to be smarter about how and when we process that data.
Regarding the duplicate items, once we saw an influx of different OPML files we saw how we needed to improve the importer to be more robust in how it handles different variations of the same feed. It is amazing how many feeds point to the same content!
So we have made improvements to the importer and now we are working on cleaning up the DB and merging the duplicate feeds, which will also improve the accuracy of the matching algorithm.
I think your idea of saying 'Not interested' is quite cool and will be going on our list!
Thanks again for your honest feedback and support of Toluu. We will certainly be making these improvements.
Caleb Elston
Toluu
I have tried Toluu a bit, but so far I remain mystified.
example: I imported by 400+ feeds via OPML from Google reader. I coninue adding (and ocassinally deleting) feeds at google. that means my Toluu data is out of date, (over time)
2: (I think) Toluu is NOT a feedreader. so if I discover an interesting feed, what do I do next? add it manually to my feedreader?
3. Toluu site needs a crisp “about” that explains the purpose of teh site, and lays out advantages. also needs a “how to use” so far it is a puzzle to me.
(I admit I have not invested much time so far).
http://twitter.com/RonKJeffries
Hi Ron,
Thanks for the constructive feedback. It is our fault for not communicating clearly the reasons why you would want to use Toluu. We have been so focused on making it work and fixing bugs that we have not invested enough time in explaining the service for new users. You will certainly see improvements in these areas as we continue to grow, and certainly before we open up to all users. We are currently invite only.
Toluu is not a feed reader. It is a utility that helps you discover interesting feeds and see what your friends and others actually read day-in and day-out.
On the import page we have a Bookmarklet you can use to seamlessly add feeds to Toluu and your feed reader of choice when you find a new interesting blog or feed. Also, when you add a feed from within Toluu we can automatically add it to your feed reader if you want to do so. We are still trying to figure out the best way to know when you remove feeds from your reader.
Cheers,
Caleb
Toluu