What the hell is Toluu? And does it require a prescription?
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008After generally ignoring my blog for several days (as I am wont to do every now and again, especially when Twittering so much), I checked back in today only to find that I was receiving an unexpected influx of traffic from a site called Toluu. Curious, I jumped down the rabbit hole and followed the link back to a republished page of my site’s RSS feed. I surmised that Toluu must be some sort of RSS syndication system, much like Feedburner or the syndicated subdomain of LiveJournal.
So, what do you do when you want to know about something on the internet? Easy: you ask the internet. I Twittered a question regarding this discovery and was gently reminded just how fast things spread in the new social world. A response was posted on Friendfeed almost immediately. From whom? Not just anyone, of course. No, not in the hyper-connected online universe. I heard from the actual Toluu developer himself, Caleb Elston (much like Louis Gray, I subscribe to the notion that it is important to know that there are people behind the products we use every day). Caleb cheerily clued me in on what is evidently the latest social craze. Toluu is an RSS feed aggregator of sorts, that allows one to discover new feeds through the interconnectedness of like-minded friends. I imagine this is what Dave Winer had always envisioned for share.opml.org, but was never able to fully realize.
Caleb also hooked me up with a private beta invite within minutes. I visit the site, greeted by a question that makes my heart sing (and I see far too rarely): “would you like to use your OpenID credentials?” Oh, yes, for the love of GOD, please allow this to occur.
So far, so good.
Import your Twitter, Facebook, or other social media profile? You betcha. Import OPML file? Sure, why not? Integrate Toluu with Google Reader? You’re starting to read my mind, here, SOFTWARE.
So far, even better.
A few minutes later, I’ve joined up with a few users I recognize from FriendFeed, and after a little while, I see something pop into the Toluu activity stream that looks interesting. I decide to add it to my own collection of feeds. This is immediately followed by a quick redirect to Google Reader to add the feed to my feed reader.
This, my friends. This is why God invented the internet.
NOTE: Caleb also happened to mention that my blog feed is somewhat popular on Toluu for some odd reason. I mention this at the end of the post so not to seem overly narcissistic. I assume he only said that in an effort to get my curiosity in the service piqued, which it did. Score ONE for developers that know their audience.
Glad you got into Toluu! Toluu has been a great way for me to not only find new feeds from friends and peers, but also for me to make the RSS choices I like visible. Hope you enjoy it.
Nathaniel,
It makes me so happy to hear you have been enjoying Toluu and the options for OpenID, and hCard importing, and OPML importing, and Google Reader integration really made your experience smooth. It is also great to know you have been discovering interesting people and feeds too.
I do my best to monitor Twitter and FriendFeed so I can help out or answer questions, because Toluu would be an empty site without our amazing users.
If anyone would like an invite just leave a comment below with your email and I will be sure to get you one as soon as possible!
Caleb
Toluu
Nathaniel – thanks for the interesting post; a neat and clear (and enticing!) description of what Toluu means for a newcomer.
Caleb – yes please – southfields303 (a t) yahoo.co.uk. Thank you.
Hi Mark,
Gald to see you joined! Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
Toluu is one of the few “early adopter” sites lately that I’ve tried that I haven’t gotten completely sick of within the first few minutes. After playing with it some more today, I’m even more convinced that my love for this site is well founded.
Great work, Caleb! I’ll definitely continue to play around with it.
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[...] first jump on the 4th was my first post about Toluu. Most of the traffic that day came from FriendFeed. The second jump was after my follow-up post on [...]