We are asked this question occasionally, as people consider trying out topikality. To properly answer, I’ll provide a little background on our view of the world today …

The Problem. Most of us live in knowledge based economies which operate in global markets. To earn a living in this environment we need to keep up-to-date with our industry, markets, competitors, customers and profession. Yet content on the internet is growing at such a rate it’s too difficult and time consuming to consistently find these relevant articles. We need a tool that makes it simpler and easier. So we can stay ahead of the game at work and keep up-to-date with our interests, sports and hobbies.

A simple tool to help overcome the exponential growth in online content is the reason we developed topikality.

The Solution. Providing the ultimate solution to meet everyone’s needs will be nigh on impossible. So a range of solutions will most likely emerge. Each will have its strengths and each will have its place.

For example:

• Search engines are great at finding things one search at a time. Yet they often overload us with information and are inefficient at keeping you up-to-date on a topic over a period of time.
• Social bookmarking sites have the advantage of human based ranking. Yet the results are driven by the crowd (not your own needs) and can be susceptible to human error and spam.
• RSS Feeds and feed readers are efficient at managing high volumes of content. Yet they assume you want all content from each source and easily swamp you with information.
• Blogs by subject experts provide analysis, instruction and comment. Often finding them is hard and you need to read a number of blogs to gain a broad perspective of views on a topic.

The topikality solution. We created topikality with the singular purpose of continuously discovering and delivering the articles people find relevant. So anyone can simply and efficiently stay up-to-date on any topic they want.

You simply tell topikality what your topic is and it continually discovers content on the internet for you. The neat thing is how topikality learns what you like, and dislike, gradually providing better and more relevant articles each day. The more you use it the better it gets.

We take the approach of …

• Putting the user in control, as they know what’s important to them.
• The individual also knows what is most relevant to them. So there are no editors, crowds or experts telling you what you should read. You decide.
• The user can pick and choose which tools will work for them to discover and deliver relevant articles. So topikality includes content aggregation, keywords, Boolean queries, recommendation engine, training via machine learning, web site interface and email.
• Everyone has a different view of what is a credible source. So we let the user decide while avoiding spam.

In summary, we want topikality to be the best possible tool for continuously finding relevant articles on any topic. The user will always be better at knowing what is useful to them, so our role is to provide the tools they need and then get out the way.

What makes topikality different?

With topikality:

• You are in control of finding what’s relevant, not the crowd or an editor.
• It’s simple and efficient to use.
• 24 hours a day, seven days a week topikality continuously discovers relevant articles for you.
• It learns what you like, and dislike, constantly improving the quality and relevance of the articles delivered to you.
• The more you use topikality the better it gets.
• It’s easy to share relevant articles with work colleagues and friends in your social network.

When using topikality the key is the initial creation of the topik. A well defined topik sets you up for a highly relevant feed of articles. I’ll cover the creation of topiks in an article very soon.