Archive for the ‘Dave Pell’ tag
Analyzing Addictomatic
Addictomatic is fun. Its almost a year old now, but I just found it today.
Addict-o-matic makes me smile. “Instantly create a custom page with the latest buzz on any subject“, and in that respect it kind of reminds me of Squidoo, but this dynamic search functions effortlessly and without any supervision - which is why I’ll forgive off topic results.
Who created Addict-o-matic?
A quick search brought me to Jason Kincaid’s May 1st 2008 article on Tech Crunch. That’s where I learned that Rollyo founder Dave Pell is behind the innovation. He also writes Davenetics, the official blog of the next five minutes.
Jason Kincaid, the author of the Tech Crunch article was rather critical of the addictomatic experiment. He cites the lack of a ‘relevance algorithm’ necessary to properly refine the search as the biggest detractor; and it’s true there’s a lot of redundant information, and not everything presented in the results is on topic.
Addict-o-matic has a clean layout
Three columns of content boxes do a good job sorting out the mess of information. Users can add, remove, and rearrange the location of each headline feed, and layouts can be saved by simply creating a bookmark. The site offers plugins to help integrate Addictomatic into browser search fields.
Addictomatic pulls images and headlines from multiple RSS feeds and presents them in small boxes similar to those found on iGoogle and Netvibes. Stories are drawn from top blogs, news feeds, and media sites. Unfortunately there’s still no way to customize the search or add your own feeds (though there are plans to add these feature).
The new search engine landscape
In my quest to learn everything, I’ve investigated the ‘new search engine’ landscape to view the competition.
Popurls didn’t hook me, but I don’t like websites with black backgrounds. Secondly I couldn’t find much information on anything except the biggest subjects and news media keywords.
Alltop couldn’t find ANYTHING. This service produced very disappointing results for just about everything I tried, and of course I tried searching for all my own media first. Alltop asks users to search topics from a preordained menu of categories, and that’s why it’s worthless.
How does SMOJOE use these tools?
Social marketers can use this visual search tools to spot holes in their client’s social media, and find new places to post photos and links. After I typed “Smojoe” into the search box it became obvious that I still have a lot of work to do to increase this domain’s findability. I could immediately see the places i needed to visit, and the experience actually gave me some fresh ideas - that makes Addictomatic a winner in my book.
