Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com, and it's guest time on the show this morning, and I am very pleased, once again, to have the, uh, entrepreneur's entrepreneur, Mr. Guy Kawasaki. Guy, welcome back to The BusinessMakers Show.

Guy: Thank you. Thank you for having me again.

Russ: It was June 2007, you were excited at the time. You had just launched Trumors.

Guy: Uh-hunh (affirmative).

Russ: Tell us about Trumors.

Guy: Well, Trumors was a site that was trying to further the user-generated democratization of journalism, and people could post news to a site. Subsequently, we sold that site and now I'm totally focused on a new site called Alltop-

Russ: Okay.

Guy: -which is a digital magazine rack, if you will-an online magazine rack.

Russ: Okay. But Trumors is still out there.

Guy: Yes, it's owned by NowPublic and it's still going.

Russ: Okay, cool. So tell us about Alltop.

Guy: Alltop is an online magazine rack where we aggregate information by topics. We have more than 500 now. They range from adoption to zoology, wine, food, baseball-you name it, it's in there-photography, every topic you can conceive of, and we're trying to make it so that it's easier for people to get filtered information as opposed to typing the word "photography" into Google and you'll get 40 million hits.

Russ: Right.

Guy: Not too helpful.

Russ: So we're getting the Guy Kawasaki filter.

Guy: Yeah, well, it's more than the Guy Kawasaki filter.

Russ: Okay.

Guy: It's the Guy Kawasaki filter and staff and really, uh, topic experts.

Russ: Okay.

Guy: Yeah, so we're trying to provide aggregation without aggravation, if you will.

Russ: Okay. Well, let's say that I find a topic, like say, entrepreneurship-

Guy: Yes, so if you went to the Alltop homepage and you typed in "entrepreneurship" it would tell you that we call it startups.alltop.

Russ: Okay.

Guy: And there you will find 75 blogs and websites aggregated, their last 5 stories about startups.

Russ: Okay. I assume I can subscribe, set up an RSS feed to that topic.

Guy: No-you know-no, honestly, we don't let you create RSS feeds for a topic because we have aggregated, on average, 100 feeds. So if you can imagine getting a feed of 100 feeds, it's not so useful.

Russ: Okay.

Guy: You would get literally hundreds of stories every day, and so it would be one more inbox to worry about.

Russ: Okay.

Guy: So our vision is you come to the site and you scan 100 at a time.

Russ: Okay, so therefore, you're kind of building your traffic at Alltop.

Guy: Well, that's true, too.

Russ: Okay.

Guy: Yes, that helps.

Russ: Well, and describe to us how you monetize that site.

Guy: We sell advertising. As you can imagine, the people who are reading any given topic have self-selected, so if you're in wine.alltop, guess what? You're interested in wine. It's not because you wrote a blog where you mentioned the word wine. You're into wine. So we believe we can offer as niche and targeted advertising as possible.

Russ: Tell me, what's your perspective on online advertising in these tough, tough economic times that we're in?

Guy: Yeah, well, certainly it's not easy. People are asking for real results and-you know-click throughs or actions or something. I think that's natural and-you know-it is their money, so it's not easy. The concept of, "I'll get millions of eyeballs and somehow figure out how to monetize it," is-that dog don't hunt no more.

Russ: Right.

Guy: So it's a challenge.

Russ: Okay.

Guy: But everything is a challenge right now.

Russ: Oh yeah, you've been an active social media participant, both in blogging and you're pretty active on Twitter. Tell us how you incorporate that into the Alltop initiative.

Guy: Well, the Alltop initiative was built on Twitter. People on Twitter helped us figure out what topics to add, what feeds to put into those topics, and they also help us promote the topics, so I don't think Alltop would be what it is today without Twitter-not at all.

Russ: Okay. And there is a lot of discussion these days on whether or not Twitter and the activity there is diminishing the importance of blogging. Do you still blog?

Guy: I still blog but I don't blog as much. It's for 2 reasons. One is I have less to say and the other is I'm on Twitter too much, so those 2 things are creating the perfect storm.

Russ: Okay. I find it hard to believe that you have less to say.

Guy: Oh, believe me, I do.

Russ: But you have come out with another new, very popular book.

Guy: Yes, that's called Reality Check and it's a compendium, a physician's desk reference of management, if you will. It's 474 pages and I try to cover all the basic topics. It's the writing and the knowledge that I wish I had at the start of my career.

Russ: Okay. Well, compare it to The Art of the Start, your last book.

Guy: The Art of the Start is 200 pages. This is 474 pages.

Russ: Okay, okay.

Guy: A very quick measure is at least twice as much content.

Russ: Okay.

Guy: And honestly? You shouldn't buy both.

Russ: Okay.

Guy: At this point you should buy Reality Check.

Russ: Okay. And how long has that been out now?

Guy: Since October.

Russ: Okay. What do you think is in store for the future for Guy Kawasaki?

Guy: I hope I can make Alltop a success and make less speeches and get on less airplanes.

Russ: All right.

Guy: That would be the plan for me-a very simple plan.

Russ: Okay. Well, before I let you go, I need to let our audience know I'm able to get this time with you because you are speaking at the Mom 2.0 Summit.

Guy: Uh-hunh (affirmative), uh-hunh (affirmative).

Russ: And an interesting summit, wouldn't you agree?

Guy: Yeah, I love this. I think moms are ruling the world now, so you need to tap into that force.

Russ: Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you spending some time with us once again on The BusinessMakers Show.

Guy: My pleasure. My pleasure.

Russ: Thanks a lot. You've been listening to Guy Kawasaki, and this is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.