If you follow me on Twitter or the Mercedes Knits Facebook page (You do, right? You don’t?! Well, let’s fix that right now.), you’ve probably noticed many of my new updates on general knitting and crochet news link through a site called Sulia.com.
What is Sulia?
Well the best (and funniest) description that I’ve heard is that Sulia looks like Pinterest and Twitter got together and had a baby. A really pretty, clever baby.
By combining a tiled layout, with lots of lovely images, and little blurbs about the linked articles, Sulia is one of several recently developed news/blog aggregators that help you filter through lots of online content to pick out the gems. So instead of feeling burdened by a bloated RSS feed, you can scan over the clean layout of Sulia and just get some fun highlights of the subjects that really interest you. The content is partially pulled via algorithm from existing RSS feeds, and partially posted by contributors, or “experts”, who curate content in their area of expertise.
I’ve been using other news aggregators on my iPad for a while, like Zite and Flipboard (mostly Zite), so I’m really familiar, and comfortable, with these aggregators, and have walked away from my RSS blog feeds to get updates on crafty blogs. I usually get my info curated by one of these sites, or by recommendations on articles from friends and colleagues on twitter. And I don’t miss clicking on Google Reader and having that guilty feeling when I see I have 2,000+ unread blog posts from the craft industry. Really, very few people could keep up with that giant pile of blog posts to read. Sister Diane over at Craftypod posted an excellent in depth article on these news aggregators and using them to keep a healthy balance of online media consumption.
When Sulia contacted me about curating content for their knitting channel, I was all in. I’m an early adopter. I love having a hand in shaping a new platform. And I LOVE sharing cool content. It really does make my day to bring folks funny pictures, cool ideas, and nifty product info. Full disclosure: Sulia is paying me a small honorarium for my writing posts on the site, which I think is an excellent way to treat their contributors as professionals and ensure they get quality content. I write fun posts for knitters and crocheters, and get a bit of extra bourbon money in my pocket. Sulia is also still in it’s early days, so I’ve been watching them change features based on the suggestions of readers and contributors. The folks there been very responsive to feedback, so I expect that any gripes early users may have will be ironed out fairly quickly as the platform develops.
