As one of the original Apple employees, Guy Kawasaki is well-known as an entrepreneur in the technology and internet space. More recently, he's become a publisher, too, founding the rumor reporting site Truemors in 2007 (it was purchased in June by NowPublic) and most recently, Alltop, an aggregator of "all the top" sites on the web grouped by subject.


Guy says that you can think of an Alltop site as a "digital magazine rack" of the Internet, with the goal being to enhance a visitor's online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that they might already visiting and helping them discover sites they didn't know existed. That's the official description. But what I think is especially cool about Alltop is that most of the site seems curated by Guy himself, based on feedback from his audience.
The Marketing section of Alltop, for example, includes both MarketingProfs as well as the New York Times Media & Advertising sections and Bethe Harte's The Harte of Marketing. And the "Life" section of Alltop includes my personal blog, A n n a r c h y just across the aisle from Real Simple magazine's blogs. The result is an eclectic and more intimate feel, which sets it apart from a simple aggregation service.
1. Tell me about the genesis of Alltop.
The inspiration for Alltop is a site called Popurls. This site aggregates tech and business news feeds. It got us thinking about other news topics that could use some aggregation. We started with celebrities and food six months ago and kept going. Alltop is now about three full-time equivalents spread out around the US, and we have approximately 250 topics.

2. So how are things going at Alltop? Are you happy with its progress?
We're getting about 45,000 to 65,000 page views per day after six months, so things are going well. We can always use more traffic–and anyone from a web company that says differently is lying. It's not a business yet, but it looks like it could be.
3. You call it an "online magazine rack" of popular topics. Some of the topics seem fairly well-defined and narrow, like Menieres, or Vegan, or VOIP, or Geocaching. How do you decide the topic categories?
The topics are a combination of what we think will draw lots of traffic (for example, Politics.Alltop), what matters to us (for example, I have Meniere's disease and I love hockey), what we think we have a social obligation to cover (for example, Green.alltop and Adoption.alltop), and what people suggest (for example, Scuba.alltop). We're not proud–if people want a topic, we'll usually build it. My goal is worldwide domination.
How can a marketer use Alltop?
Alltop can help marketers stay on top of their profession. I would recommend Socialmedia.alltop, Egos.alltop (all the big bloggers), Marketing.alltop, Branding.alltop, and PR.alltop. Then you can go vertical–that is, for the market niche that you're in. For example, cleantech marketers should read Green.alltop, and tech marketers should read Tech.alltop. After that, it's what interests you: Food.alltop, Wine.alltop, Travel.alltop, or Shopping.alltop.
What's the metric you rely on to define the "top" Alltop blogs?
Our main metric is page views in the business model sense. That said, we derive tremendous satisfaction from creating topics such as Adoption.alltop, ADHD.alltop, and Green.alltop.

So what's your take: Should all businesses be blogging? Should they all participate in social media?
"All" is a strong word. Should your corner service station participate in social media? Maybe–it could become the "Click and Clack" of the blogosphere. But I'd rather use a service station that did good work and eat at a restaurant that served good food than mediocre ones with Twitter accounts.
You spend a lot of time on Twitter. What's the value for you?
I derive more value from Twitter than anyone else in the world. Alltop would not be nearly what it is without Twitter. The Twitter community suggests feeds and topics and spreads the word for us. Thank God for Twitter.
You have a long career of innovation in your online ventures .... from Apple to Garage Ventures to Truemors and Alltop. What makes you really excited about an idea or a particular business path?
Usually it's something that I would, or do, use. Truemors passed that test. So does Alltop. I invested in Posterous because I love it so much as an adjunct to my blog and Twitter.
Tell me about your new book.
It's called Reality Check, and it's $30 and 500 pages. Do you need to know any more? :-) Actually, it's a compilation of the best that I've written and interviewed in my whole career. If you're familiar with Peter Drucker, Reality Check is to me what Management is to Peter Drucker. Not that I'm a Peter Drucker.