In a world with more than 100 million blogs, do you find it difficult to find new and interesting things to read? How do you sift through all of the noise to find blogs that you might like? Would you like a simple way to find good content? Maybe Toluu will save the day for you.
Toluu matches RSS feed readers like Google Reader with the power of recommendation to help you find interesting new content. The way it works is very simple:
1- Get an invite code off of their site, which has one of the cleanest designs that I’ve ever seen. It’s easy to do, there’s a link to get the invites at the top of their homepage.
2- Once you get the invite code, set up your account.
3- The starting point is to import some of your current favorite RSS feeds into Toluu. If your current feed reader can create an .OPML file (a standard for storing RSS feed URLs), you can import that file into Toluu. Otherwise, you can start adding feeds manually. This information about your current RSS subscriptions gives Toluu a basis to start for developing recommendations.
4- Next, click on the Matches page. Based on the information that you’ve entered into Toluu, it will start recommending other Toluu members to you, showing the % fit between your likes and their likes. It will also list up to five blogs that you would likely fit your interests.
5- Clicking on a blog name will allow you to preview that blog like many other RSS readers do. You can subscribe to the blog within Toluu.
6- On top of all that, you can export your Toluu subscriptions into an OPML file, import that into your favorite RSS feed reader and the loop is closed.
There are a number of other things that you can do within Toluu, like building up your contact list of social media users. You can also use different views within Toluu to get different recommendations for blogs based on activity within:
- The past week
- The past month
- All time
At its heart, Toluu is a simple tool, but it looks and works great. What more can you ask for from a tool? Try it for yourself!
Mark Dykeman broadcasts from his brain about communications, social media, and technology several times per week at Broadcasting Brain. He enjoys participating in several social media sites, including Twitter, FriendFeed and StumbleUpon.