Disqus - Friends of mikecs83

Re: toluu – helping rss addicts everywhere

calebelston — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:25:46 -0000

Jeff, thanks for the great review! I love your 'rss addict crack' metaphor. I know I have been following the feeds you have been adding and have found some really great blogs I never knew about already.

The two feature requests you bring up are at the top of our list, so keep your eyes peeled.

Also, let me know if you need any more invites to send to your readers.

Caleb
Toluu

Re: toluu – helping rss addicts everywhere

calebelston — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:30:05 -0000

I do my best to keep on top of everything. It has been so amazing the response to Toluu so far, I am totally humbled, and so it is so cool to talk with so many great people.

Re: Toluu Invites

calebelston — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:36:18 -0000

Hi Franklin,

Thanks for mentioning Toluu to your readers! Please let me know if you need any more invites.

Also, if you have any suggestions for ways we could improve the site please let me know.

Caleb
Toluu

Re: I am Awesomesauce Approved!

calebelston — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:06:01 -0000

Congrats!

Re: Beta Feedback should be much easier

calebelston — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:28:34 -0000

You beat us to the punch. We will be rolling out an easy to find feedback form on Toluu tomorrow morning.

You are absolutely right that young sites really need to make it easy for users to get in touch with the devs.

Re: (jeff)isageek.net upgrades

calebelston — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:06:50 -0000

Nice. I need to upgrade my blog this weekend. Gonna try the automatic upgrade route.

Re: My Problems with Toluu

calebelston — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:18:49 -0000

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

Re: My Problems with Toluu

calebelston — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:20:50 -0000

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

Re: Lusting Over Web Apps – My List

calebelston — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:03:30 -0000

Great list! It is great to see Toluu mentioned among so many other fantastic apps. I think Google Reader, Twitter and FriendFeed are getting the most usage (besides Toluu) from me these days.

Caleb
Toluu

Re: Where’s My Toluu Enthusiasm?

calebelston — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:42:42 -0000

Sorry to be late to the conversation, was traveling yesterday.

Thank you so much for the fantastic feedback guys. We are still in our private beta and working to get Toluu ready for primetime. We continue to release updates almost everyday.

Corvida, I agree that there a certainly UI and interaction improvements to make to Toluu. We agree that some items are a bit too far removed and we are working to balance the instant availability of the info you want vs. the clutter of too many items on the page.

We are working to find other ways to keep your feeds in sync with your feed reader. We know this is one of the most important things to use Toluu effectively.

We also know that the matching can be slow for users with more than a few hundred feeds. We are working to correct this and increase the speed for the site in general.

Re: Where’s My Toluu Enthusiasm?

calebelston — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:46:03 -0000

Mike, you are absolutely right. One of the things we will do before launching publicly is expanding the FAQ as well as some sort of tour that explains what Toluu does and why it is useful.

Is there a particular part of the app that took a lot of time to grok?

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

calebelston — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:51:55 -0000

I think that a major 'feature' of Twitter and FriendFeed *is* there community. If you think of it in these terms, these 2 sites have a major incentive to focus on improving the community feature, so while it may seem that they don't 'add' tons of user facing features, growing their community is their main focus. I know this may seem obvious, but when was the last time you saw, 'Massive Community' listed as a product feature

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

calebelston — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:19:30 -0000

LOL

Re: 60,000 duplicate feeds removed

calebelston — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:08:09 -0000

Just added Disqus!

Re: louisgray.com: Where Are They Now? A Look at A Dozen Services That Debuted Here

calebelston — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:44:57 -0000

Louis, thanks for including Toluu in the round-up. As you know we are working as quickly as possible to roll out the features users are asking for and making the kind of back end improvements that will support more growth.

It is an amazing time for content discovery and sharing and all of these companies are doing amazing things in their own right, and I can't wait to see how things continue to evolve and where we are at in a year!

Re: louisgray.com: Shyftr Gets More Social, Showing Who Reads Feeds You Do

calebelston — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:18:41 -0000

The Shyftr guys are a great bunch, they are super nice and are building a really slick feed reader. They were a great help in getting the Toluu integration going and offering any help we needed.

There is a lot of value in knowing what your friends are reading as people are ultimately the best filter, and algorithms are great when they surface interesting human behavior.

Re: Toluu Integration - Shyftr Blog

calebelston — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:34:36 -0000

Hey guys, Glad to now have Shyftr available to our users at Toluu. I appreciate all of your help and can't wait to work on even more cool integrations...

Re: louisgray.com: RSSMeme Creator Launches Tweet2Tweet to Watch Twitter Discussion

calebelston — Sun, 18 May 2008 00:32:23 -0000

Very nice. Ben is a rapid fire developer for sure and he will be improving this daily. Can't wait to see how it progresses.

Re: The tech blogosphere is a closed circle feeding on itself

calebelston — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:43:49 -0000

While I agree that a great deal of time an energy is spent on pontification and 'bitchmemes' the power of some of these social sites that pick up steam because of the blogosphere is remarkable. I would argue the coverage these sites give to all of these ideas and services does eventually impact those who are advocating change. No matter your politics, what the Obama campaign has been able to do with social networks, distributed phone banking via the internet, and personal fundraising pages, is remarkable. Sites like Kiva.org are also doing amazing things in bringing micro lending to a mainstream audience, it is changing lives.

Re: louisgray.com: Blogging 2.0 Causing Friction With 1.0 Bloggers

calebelston — Mon, 19 May 2008 01:50:43 -0000

To quote the great Bob Dylan, The times they are a changin'.

Re: louisgray.com: Toluu Embraces Twitter With New Integration Option

calebelston — Mon, 19 May 2008 08:39:13 -0000

Louis, Thanks so much for the great post. We are so excited to see how users interact with these new features. I can say from using this new Activity stream in testing I have already found a couple feeds I would have missed in the old view.

We heard from users that customizable messages for Twitter posts was something they wanted, and so we took the extra time needed to implement that code and are glad we did, it really makes the twitters your own, not some canned response.

Re: Toluu Activities Includes Twitter Integration

calebelston — Mon, 19 May 2008 08:43:46 -0000

Corvida,

Thanks for the awesomesauce post! We are really excited to open up the activity stream to everyone across the Toluu universe as we think it will really help people connect with interesting people as well as find feeds they would have otherwise missed.

I can't wait to see what kind of Twitter custom message you decide to use, I will have to keep my eyes peeled.

Re: Toluu Adds Twitter Support And Redesigns Activity Stream

calebelston — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:04:53 -0000

Billy, thanks for the post! I hope you find the improvements useful, I am sure your readers would love to know more about the blogs you actually read day in and day out.

Re: louisgray.com: Toluu Embraces Twitter With New Integration Option

calebelston — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:07:36 -0000

Just sent you an invite. Let me know if you have any suggestions for ways we could make it better.

Re: Toluu Adds Twitter And Strengthens Its Streams

calebelston — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:16:59 -0000

Cool to hear this has put you over the top, I think this will really close the loop for many people, being able to share the feeds they are actually reading with friends is a powerful thing. Let me know if you have any suggestions or questions.

Caleb
Toluu