Considering alternative blog aggregators

An anonymous commenter on my previous post pointed me out to several alternative blog aggregator sites. I’d already discovered one of them, and heard about another of them, but two were completely new to me. So I decided to try them all out and compare them. My first impressions below.

blogged.my

The site loads up fast for me, including the different ways of viewing the site. They do have one interesting feature in the “most popular” section, akin to a mini digg section. Here you can view the top ten pings in the last 24 hours, week, month, or year. Their pings are listed as short blurbs. It’s paginated, so you can view previous pings as well. You can navigate by browsing tags, the most popular pings, and even by popular tags via the tag cloud at the bottom. They also have a search box on the sidebar near the top.

SARAwho

I found out about this one at the same time that I discovered blogged.my. It’s supposed to be for Southeast Asian blogs, even though it seems to be pretty much dominated by the Malaysians right now. I’m not sure if that’s a function of the prolific writings of Malaysian bloggers, or the level of outreach for the site. Judging from the number of updates, I’d guess it’s due to the latter reason.

SARAwho has a few feeds on the right sidebar, and you can view the pings from the last 4 hours, 8 hours (default view), 16 hours, 1 day, or 1 week.

Beras Padu

I’d heard of Beras Padu before, from other blog posts, but I’ve never visited the site. This is laid out in similar style to SARAwho, although I’m not sure which site copied which. There are certainly more malay bloggers pinging here, and overall it gets a lot of pings.

The site loads up pretty quickly. Beras Padu has a “reader community” and the right sidebar has links to selected blog posts. You can view the pings from the last 12 hours (default view), 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week. There’s even an RSS feed for Beras Padu, although you’ll have to click through to the owner’s site to grab the link.

Planet Malaysia

This one is new to me. Planet Malaysia started as a small portal for Malaysian bloggers, and it seems to have grown in time.

The site takes awhile to load up for me, probably because it doesn’t just list links to other blogs. I’m not sure how their members ping the site, since the site has more than just links to blogs. The individual entries seem to be in custom formats, with text, formatting, and pics. The way it’s done, you may never need to click through to the original blog.

The site isn’t paginated, and there’s no way to filter posts. On the right sidebar you’ll find links to archives, a blog roll, and links to recent posts.

Negaraku

Another new one for me. They have a Facebook Group, and member profiles. Their banner, however, doesn’t display correctly on this system and looks quite bad.

The site loads up pretty quickly. Arranged at the top are Category links. The posts seem to be “rated” for buzz, and you can view those popular posts. The right sidebar has links to the popular posts of the day, the previous day, the week, the month, and the year. They also have a tag cloud. The post listings have short blurbs, and some even come with full-size photos. The site is paginated, so you can browse the pings in batches.


I don’t think there’s a clear “winner” in this list. They’ll all appeal to different people of course. For myself, I haven’t decided yet which one(s) I’ll visit regularly.