Toluu Blog

We have just rolled out 2 updates to every feed page that make it easier to get to the source content, continuing our effort to open up Toluu.

When you visit any feed in Toluu you will now notice that it is RSS enabled with the original feed RSS or Atom and that the title of the feed links back to the site. Now, if you want to see more than just the 5 post previews we display you can click the title and be taken directly to the original source site. 

This is the first of many enhancements made possible by our infrastructure changes we have made over the past month as discussed in yesterdays post; 60,000 duplicate feeds removed.

One of our core beliefs is that Toluu should be as open as possible. These improvements to the feed page are another small step towards that goal. While this will most likely lead to more people clicking away from Toluu than before, to explore the original site, we believe it is the right thing to do for the ecosystem at large. Letting you decide what you do with the content you discover through Toluu.

Please feel free to leave a comment using our new Disqus comment system, letting us know other ways you want to see us open up.

Things may have seemed a bit quiet recently, but we have been working on backend improvements that lay the groundwork for a new swell of features to be rolled out in the coming weeks.

One such improvement relates to duplicate entries. We have taken great steps to remove duplicate feeds from the system that clog up our recommendation and matching algorithms. We have eliminated over 60,000 duplicate feeds in the system!

Many sites have multiple feeds that all point to the same content, many of these feeds are either old, are URL masked and redirect to the actual feed or particular feed readers tweak them in some way. This presents a challenge when we compare users who both read TechCrunch but they each have different versions of the feed. We needed to make our system more robust to handle these cases.

We have done just that.

We have applied what we learned and have added ’scrubbing bubbles’ to our feed importation to do all the magic needed to keep the algorithms and profile pages from getting clogged. Please leave a comment if you find a feed we missed!

Every profile page on Toluu is now also an hCard. This gives you the freedom to utilize your profile information in the ways you want.

hCard is a microformat for identifying people in a programatic way. This means that your profile information: your name, nickname, avatar, and website are now portable.

As more and more sites allow users to import hCards to jump start account creation, like we do or Get Satisfaction does, Toluu can be a location you pull your data from.

We believe in Data Portability and the simple fact that you own your data. We are working to give you more ways of getting your data into Toluu and more ways of getting your data out of Toluu. hCard enabled profiles are one piece of the puzzle for Toluu.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for ways you would like us to accomplish this please feel free to leave a comment below.

The past 3 weeks have been absolutely amazing. Toluu went from a handful of friends and family to a place where oodles of people are discovering new and interesting feeds and people. Along the way we have done our best to make ourselves available on Twitter, email, and blogs. However we have been missing one crucial bit.

We were missing a dead simple feedback page. Today that changes.

We knew we neeeded easier way to send feedback and report bugs and had been working on such a page, but a blog post by Franklin Pettit ‘Beta Feedback should be much easier’ really lit a fire under us to get it released.

So this is what it looks like,

The new feedback page is given prominence in our top navigation so it is easily accessible and will be highlighted in blue for a while to really draw people’s attention to it. From the page you can select the type of feedback you would like to give and then type in your message; long or short.

We want to hear from even more of you! What do you like? What do you want? Are you having trouble with something? Is something kinda wonky? Anything and everything is encouraged. We have grown so quickly because of all of you, and we want to make sure you can get in touch with us.

We just rolled out an enhancement to the ‘Activity’ page, now you will see double the number of activity entries.

As our contact lists grow and people integrate Toluu into their daily routine there is a flurry of new activity taking place all the time. When coming back to the activity page, you told us how you could miss what your friends had just added or how you wanted to get back to an entry you had seen. We also felt the pain of the 10 item activity stream.

So we decided to make it better!

The seemingly simple change of upgrading from 10 items to 20 items was not quite so simple. We worked hard to ensure our infrastructure could handle doubling the load on one of our most popular pages. We are confident the changes will have little to no impact on the performance of your activity page.

We think this change will make it easier and faster to discover the great feeds and people your friends are finding on Toluu.

We have just rolled out another top requested feature, a personalized daily digest.

We are all overwhelmed with email, and so we want to be a good email citizen. Now you can receive a single email, once-a-day, with updates on what feeds your friends have been adding to Toluu. You can stay connected and increase your chances of finding a really interesting feed with just 1 email a day.

Up until today, every new user would receive email updates every time one of their contacts added a new feed. While this worked fine on a small scale, it became overwhelming once you passed a handful of contacts. So we are changing these defaults going forward, the ‘Updated Feeds’ notification option is now off by default for new users.

This new digest is a great way to keep up with what your friends find interesting without the bulk of multiple emails. It also gives way to the possible serendipitous effect of realizing a few of your friends all added a new feed in the same day!

When rolling out the digest we wanted to respect peoples chosen notification settings. If you decided to turn off the ‘Updated Feeds’ notifications, we honored your wishes so you will need to enable the ‘Daily Digest’ if you would like to receive it. If you are receiving the ‘Updated Feed’ notifications you are all set, and will receive your daily digest tomorrow morning.

To check your settings simply login and visit http://www.toluu.com/account/notifications

We are big fans of twitter and now that Toluu is being used by many people it is a great place to communicate quickly and openly.

I have been able to chat with dozens of you through Twitter and hope to meet even more of you in the coming weeks.

One of the coolest things to come from twitter is a discussion about new ideas for Toluu. Today a few new users were asking others to check and see how many feeds they had in Toluu, because they were not sure the OPML uploader had got all of their feeds. Then Cyndy Aleo-Carreira twitter username fourlittlebees just asked us to put the count for feeds imported right in the success message. This was a great idea!

It took about 10 minutes to implement and push live! Now every time you import an OPML you will know how many feeds were added!

This sort of thing gets me so excited about the community we are building and the tremendous support we have been finding in our users. I can only hope that as we continue to grow we will find more and more users who participate and help drive the product forward.

PS My twitter username is calebelston

We are fulfilling the 2 most requested features to date; RSS feeds of activity and tighter feed reader integration.

Your activity stream is being liberated! We are now generating 2 RSS feeds for your activity. One is your activity on the site and the other is your activity plus your contact’s activity.

Now your Toluu activity; the feeds you add, the feeds you favorite, the people you connect with, is now completely portable. We expect many people will take this stream to places like FriendFeed or Socialthing. Simply plug it in like any other feed and your friends on these services will see what you are up to. The cool thing about the combined feed of your activity + contacts is this would be a great feed to your feed reader to keep up to date with what your friends are doing on Toluu without missing a beat. I have been using the feed this way and find it super useful.

Below is a screenshot of the full activity feed-

The next thing is tighter feed reader integration. We have heard from users, ‘I found and added a bunch of feeds on Toluu, how do I get them to my feed reader easily?’. We do have a really easy way to ‘Export’ your subscriptions, but this was not the best solution for daily use of the site. We knew we could do better.

Now, when you find an interesting feed on Toluu and click ‘+ Add Feed’ the feed will be automatically added to your Toluu account and to your feed reader of choice. All you do is pick your feed reader and from then on we take care of the rest.

We support services like Google Reader, Netvibes, Rojo, Bloglines, Pageflakes, Newsgator, and Desktop readers. If your reader is not there you can always get the raw RSS by selecting Desktop Reader. And if you ever decide to change feed readers simply go into your account settings and switch your feed reader.

Adding the feed ‘louisgray’ to Toluu and then Google Reader

Adding feed to Google Reader

The account page where you can update your reader choice

This new streamlined flow gets us closer to closing the gap between Toluu and your feed reader.

Please let us know what you think of the new features and if you find any weirdness let us know.

(P.S. Logout then log back in to take advantage of the new feed reader integration)

Just a quick note, the site has been running from our new server system at our new DC for the past 24 hours now. We have been monitoring the load carefully, and are extremely pleased with the performance of the new system.

You should experience a snappier site due to this upgrade.

There are a few lingering issues related to the migration: some profile pics not displaying. We are working to correct these issues quickly.

Thanks so much for your continued support and feedback, keep it coming as it helps guide the product roadmap. Don’t tell anyone but… we are actually in development of the 2 most requested features right now! So keep your eyes peeled for those.