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!

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

So the blog has been quiet for the past few months as development intensified and all our energy was focused on implementing the core features of Toluu. Over the past few months we have taken Toluu from a proof of concept, making sure our servers could handle the matching algorithm to today, where we are fine tuning all of the remaining issues as we prepare to invite more people to start using Toluu.

The core of the app is ready and we will be sending invites out within the next few days. Please let us know of any issues you encounter or any suggestions you may have. We will be blogging more regularly from here on out.