Toluu Feed Page & Speed Enhancements

June 11th, 2008 by Franklin Pettit · Comments

Toluu continues to improve and today releases another set of enhancements to its already promising RSS recommendation site. The enhancements include additions to feeds and a speedier contact page.

I have been very interested in Toluu since Louis Gray’s first post describing the RSS feed matching site. The site had already seen many enhancements already despite being in private beta. Caleb Elston Toluu’s founder has previously added many features including social networking features and twitter integration.

Today Toluu improves rolling out improvements to the feed pages. Although not striving to be a place that feeds are read, Toluu displays the feed content very cleanly. Today Toluu adds two tabs to the feed pages. A tab called “Popular” and a tab called “Subscribers.”

The Popular tab is just what seems the most popular posts from the feed. While the Subscribers tab is the most intriguing to this user.
	Popular Tab	Subscriber Tab

It shows subscribers of the feed and other feeds they are subscribed to. I found myself clicking from feed to feed via the users that are subscribed to them. This produces a new interesting way to move around in Toluu. Caleb described the feed page enhancements this way:

“These updates really center around making it easier to decide if you really want to subscribe to a particular feed and helping you find others who read a feed you are interested in. Exposing more pivot points.”

The other significant change out today is speed to the contacts page. Speed is good. I commented early on about Toluu’s speed. Caleb indicated that they sped up the contacts page by 5x. It feels very responsive to me.

Toluu’s changes today all seem to be around helping the users see what others are reading, which feeds are popular, and encouraging movement within Toluu. This seems to be accomplished.

I asked Caleb directly; Can we expect additional enhancements soon?

He responded,

“Yes, we are working on more ways to quickly see if you would be interested in a feed.”

Toluu is great and I have 25 invites. Let me know if you would like to try it.

Tags: RSS · Toluu

Viewing 12 Comments

calebelston 6 months ago 2 points
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Franklin,

Thanks for the great post! Cool to hear you like the clean design of the feed pages, we always wanted them to be streamlined so you could, at a glance, see if the content was interesting. Hear that you found your self exploring the site more because of the new Subscribers tab is fantastic.

Also, about speed, we are working very hard to continue to increase the speed of the site while we continue to grow in usage and in functionality. Many of these pages are quite complex to create, but we think we have some smart solutions to keep them loading fast.

Cheers,
Caleb
Toluu

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19 /people/calebelston/ /people/calebelston/following/ http://www.toluu.com/betainvite calebelston

mfruchter 6 months ago 1 point
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Excellent write up Franklin. Toluu just became more social, this is a great improvement.

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11 /people/mfruchter/ /people/mfruchter/following/ http://michaelfruchter.com/blog fruchter

KnightKnetwork 6 months ago 1 point
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Very nice! I have to wonder if Caleb ever sleeps. This Toluu update provides more access points to the data and that's always welcome. I am, however, very disappointed that you have more subscribers than me, gotta work on that.

As Toluu gets more members and more constant activity I'd love to see the Activity feeds update live similar to the way WeeWar.com does. It'd just be for show, but I don't underestimate the usefulness of little eye candy.

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8 /people/KnightKnetwork/ /people/KnightKnetwork/following/ http://KnightKnetwork.com 692423923 Tygerdave Tygerdave

prattmic 6 months ago 1 point
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Nice post. Could you send me an invite? prattmic AT gmail DOT com

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Franklin 6 months ago 1 point
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Done. Enjoy.

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ThinRedLine 6 months ago 1 point
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I'd love to give Toluu a try :P I just heard Leo and Amber talking about it on TwIT Live, and ran across your blog posts about it. Do you have any invites left? morgantable@yahoo.com Thanks.

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calebelston 6 months ago 1 point
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Just sent! What did Leo and Amber say about Toluu? I was on another radio interview hehe

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19 /people/calebelston/ /people/calebelston/following/ http://www.toluu.com/betainvite calebelston

ThinRedLine 6 months ago 1 point
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They both loved the concept and discussed the implications. Specifically how Toluu opens the door for individuals to create their own mini newspapers and editorial pages, by following the comments of an author across multiple blogs. This also gives exposure to blogs and discussions they might not have come across otherwise. Leo and Amber both noted how Toluu addressed the need for commenter to have a central place to coordinate their thoughts, opinions and observations across multiple sites of content for themselves as well as sharing.

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calebelston 6 months ago 1 point
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I think you might be thinking of Disqus, which has to do with comments. hehe

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ThinRedLine 6 months ago 1 point
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Hi Caleb. You're right. This is what happens when one tries to listen to a podcast while read something completely different. I went back and realized they were discussing Toluu and Disqus simultaneoulsy. I exercised the invite and created an account. My thoughts so far
1. LOVE how easy it was to import all of my RSS feeds using the OPML - thought a quick explanation of what an OPML is might be helpful for people who are not aware of what it is. I only knew about OPML files by chance.
2. As Toluu matures, consider ways to organize feeds and organize them by rank. The first RSS feed that shows up in my list is a blog that I rarely read.

I'm looking forward to exploring the site more and seeing what I run across as far as new blog :)

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calebelston 6 months ago 1 point
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Glad to hear the import process was simple and easy for you, I agree a bit more info would be helpful or less savvy users. And I also agree that better organization of your own feeds will help with the discovery process a great deal.

Let me know if you have any other ideas or suggestions!

Caleb
Toluu

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ThinRedLine 6 months ago 1 point
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Thanks for the invite. Look forward to using Toluu :)

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