Seth Godin is an exceptional marketing consultant. I’ve read all his books – my favorite is Purple Cow. I routinely bring up his ideas when talking to companies about the best way to get media and early adopter attention: build an exceptional, attention-grabbing product (and if you haven’t, go back and start again). It seems obvious, but most startups don’t think that way. They build something first, then think about the best way to market whatever it is that they’ve built (often by hammering away at journalists and spending whatever capital they have on Google adsense, Overture, etc.).
So when Seth put his name behind a new startup last year, Squidoo, people noticed, and expected one hell of a Purple Cow. The Squidoo idea was simple and easy to explain: allow anyone to build a single page, called a lens, on a topic that he or she is passionate about. The person building the lens, the “lensmaster”, gets recognition as an expert in his or her area of expertise, and cash. Squidoo shares a percentage of profits with its authors.
Now here’s the problem. If Squidoo doesn’t work out as planned, and I don’t think it will, Seth loses more than his time and whatever capital he’s put into Squidoo. He also loses credibility as an expert in product marketing. To borrow the metaphor, Squidoo could become an albatross around Seth’s neck.
Why Squidoo Won’t Work
Squidoo is a mixture of evergreen (static) and refreshed content.
Wikipedia is an excellent example of a site with evergreen content. Sure, its updated and refined, but the idea is that content on Wikipedia is something that is fairly stable and can be linked to reliably, as I did above. Wikipedia has a tremendous amount of authority for just about any piece of content. With all of this authority and inbound links (traffic), a site like Wikipedia could be massively monetized.
Blogs, on the other hand, are the very essence of refreshed content. People go back to blogs every day to see what’s new. Good blogs generate stickiness and repeat customers, which is also a model that can be monetized.
An example of a service that combines evergreen and refreshed content successfully is Myspace, which has both static content about a person and blog-like aspects where people can add fresh content.
Myspace works, however, because it’s a social network, with pages linking to eachother (your friends) in a way that produces massive inter-site traffic and networks-within-the-network. You can surf around Myspace all day just by clicking on a friend chain. People are also passionate about Myspace because the central plot of a page is you – and most people are pretty passionate about themselves.
Squidoo shares little in common with any of the services above because no one person can really be authoritative on a given topic. Wikipedia is group-created, edited and refined content, which gives it the authority it needs to get people to link to it. It’s unlikely that a Squidoo lens on a given topic (when there are a potentially infinite number of other lenses on the same topic) will ever gain that kind of authority. It would be like a Wikipedia with multiple entries on every topic – one for everyone who cared to write one.
The Statistics
To be fair, I have the benefit of hindsight. When Squidoo launched last December I was as excited as anyone about its potential. And Squidoo is still young and may very well reverse its current stagnation. But from what I see now, I wouldn’t bet on Squidoo being what Seth would call a Purple Cow.
I was forwarded a copy of the May email that Squidoo sent out to Lensmasters. It’s quite obvious from the email, as well as the Alexa trend (flat), that Squidoo is not seeing viral growth:
From: xxxxx
Date: May 5, 2006 8:36 AM
Subject: Your First Squidoo Paycheck (the real one!)
To: xxxxxHi, XXXXX!
It’s time for your first Squidoo paycheck.
(NB: If you got a cryptic one-liner email from us about this yesterday, please disregard it. Our computers went a little batty!)
We’re just out of beta, and we’re betting no one is going to retire on their lens earnings. But already some of you have earned as much as $30 (dinner for two!). Others have earned about $1. And still others have pooled their money to send thousands of dollars to places like Room to Read, which helps build schools for children in developing countries.
Chances are that what you’re seeing now is just a drop in the bucket. If you’re more interested in spreading ideas and traffic than making money, just send your share to a charity, where every bit counts. Or, check out SquidU’s tips for upping your earnings: http://www.squidu.com/Learning_Library/making-more-money.
Below you’ll find a statement of your money earned from March 1 to March 31, 2006. Probably not on par with the lottery, but at least you can enjoy a cup of coffee on us.
Thanks,
The SquidTeam: Seth, Corey, Megan, Heath and Gil
Squidoo’s Inevitable Destiny
The best lenses are generating $30 or so a month for the lensmaster. A true expert on a topic could generate many, many times that number by creating a blog, along with some static content, and putting up simple Google adsense ads. So top content producers are not going to be heading to Squidoo for the money, ever (Squidoo’s model is set up in such a way that they could never make as much money from a lens as they could on their own). And besides, the blog format just works better for experts – fresh content generates lots of links, which equals traffic and search engine juice.
The only unanswered question is whether or not experts will go to Squidoo even without the financial incentive. Maybe, but Squidoo’s tools are not particularly advanced – self publishing is easy these days.
Squidoo may generate some content creation growth, but I don’t see it generating serious page view growth under their current model.
So, if Squidoo continues to go sideways…how long before Seth starts to distance himself from his albatross?
mixing metaphors a bit on the albatross and the neck. something can either be one’s albatross (a curse) or a millstone around one’s neck in the sea (a biblical reference to one destined for inescabable doom), but i’d distinguish. an albatross around one’s neck is just sort of nasty…
I’ve always wondered why Seth Godin built this venture. It seemed he had the “alternative” marketing ideas cornered.
Then Squidoo happened.
If this doesn’t work out, does he lose his credibility?
I took a look at Squidoo and created my ‘lens’ when they started and pretty much have not looked at it since.
To me having a blog ‘Serge the Concierge’ and writing new posts on a bunch of other platforms is too time consuming.
I liked the ’seed the newsvine’ feature on Newsvine but it is not allowed to do that with your own content.
I also in the past month ’seeded’ my blog posts to ‘reddit’ and more recently ‘now public’. They both bring me decent traffic and it is so much easier than a service like Squidoo. Being originally from France i signed up with ‘expat blog’ which brought me a little different exposure.
I also signed up with ‘BlogBurst’ but I guess it will take a little time to see if it brings me extra exposure.
My 2 cents.
Serge
Biz:
http://www.njconcierges.com
Blog:
http://www.serg...heconcierge.com
Julian -
Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Read it. Know it. Live it.
Is Seth Godin a blowhard with a penchant for self-promotion and a dubious track record of execution? Squidoo is weak and uninspired, an enterprise laden with strategery and buzz but light on execution. Seth was the architect of Yahoo! Points, an abject failure that is rapidly sinking into the obscurity it deserves.
Seth Godin should go back to doing what he does best, marketing Seth Godin.
I have to admit I am a big fan of Seth’s books. I have read Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside and The Big Moo.
And at first glance, I too thought, “GENIUS” when I heard about Squidoo.
But as I spend more time consuming content on Wikipedia and Digg, I realize the power of collaborative thinking. Now I look at Squidoo and think Yahoo’s Shoposphere, which I find to be a valueless product feature. Who the $%&# is Bob? And why do I care what his home office dreams are?
What can Squidoo do at this stage in the game? In the tech industry, going “sideways” is often a products last gasp. But if the VC money has not run out and they want to give it the old college try again…drop the revenue sharing deal, destroy user driven lenses and convert the site into a collection of community powered lenses.
Will the site work or future iterations of it? I don’t think so. At the end of the day, the site just isn’t a Purple Cow.
I have actually found Squidoo quite handy as a search engine. I’ve been moving to del.icio.us, Wikipedia and Squidoo for the majortiy of my web searches, rather than Google. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
But I’m not sure I (or we) are typical of the wider internet audience. I don’t know many people who have heard of Squidoo, let alone used it. So perhaps the recent traffic dro-off is a reflection of that.
The content is generally good. The problem might be that hasn’t been strong uptake by the wider audience.
I think Seth probably has a few tricks up his sleeve … we’ll just have to wait and see.
@ari who said:
“drop the revenue sharing deal, destroy user driven lenses and convert the site into a collection of community powered lenses.”
You are sort of describing Zimbio.com
A site I want to love but can’t quite yet …. needs more people i think … but far more interesting than Squidoodue to the colloborative nature.
Ari – totally agree. The community model is much more powerful. Sites like wikihow and zimbio have much more promise – I think these companies have the right idea. They let people improve pages themselves.
but, Squidoo is much better than edgeio
What worried me about Squidoo was the creation of the new term “lens”. This means that before you can talk to anyone about Squidoo, you have to explain what a lens is and why it isn’t called a home page or a topic or a portal etc. The best new ideas, it seems to me, don’t start out trying to create new terminology as part of their marketing. It is particularly difficult when a new term is seen as proprietary – which means it is less likely that anyone else will start to use it. “Wiki” and “Blog” just grew in use because a) anyone could use them and b) they described something that was new and generic. Del.icio.us didn’t create a new term for the links you store, it just called them “bookmarks”, which everyone was used to.
WOW…where did Zimbio come from?…i must have lost it in the barrage of web 2.0 companies…i like it…i’ll have to spend some more time on it…thanks for the recommendation steve and Noah
The same can be said about Edgeio and you mr. arrington, no?
Squidoo was a smart way to build a Google AdSense honeypot and part of its failure may relate to the lower levels of income from AdSense. Also, why would Seth lose credibility? It’s smart to try out new ideas and walk away if they don’t work. With most of this new media publishing we are still figuring out what will work and what won’t. Silicon Valley tolerates massive amounts of failure, only about one startup in 20 makes it…
Of course he doesn’t lose his credibility. The man is a marketing genius and Squidoo is hardly a flop yet.
Squidoo lacks a sense of purpose because no one really knows what do with it. I had no idea how to use it effectively for the longest time until I really figured out what it was about.
Step 1 is to normalize it for the masses. Step 2 is to give it more community appeal and allow some content manipulation and addition by the masses. Unfortunately this leads away from the business model, which I think to be his first mistake.
I’m also a HUGE fan of Godin and I’d love to see Squidoo succeed, but I can’t see it happening either.
Here’s something that I found interesting, check out comparison between Squidoo and Newsvine:
http://www.alex...om+newsvine.com
It’s amazing how close their traffic patterns are towards the end.
You learn more from your mistakes than from your successes. I am sure he will be fine!
I just got a payment of $0.10 from Squidoo for my two lenses (san francisco basketball, san francisco burritos), and symbolically, I think that payment is important. I would be surprised if Squidoo’s early adopters aren’t inspired to do more by the arrival of a payment – even if that payment is tiny.
I see Squidoo as an alternative blogging platform. It was never meant to appeal to the professional blogger crowd, so to judge it on those terms is unfair.
And let’s face it – what the web 2.0 crowd thinks of these services is at best unimportant, and at worst misleading. Our collective tastes in Web services are completely out of whack with what the rest of the online population is consuming, as we should all know by now.
I’m not counting Squidoo out yet.
I’m a Seth Godin fan, so I’m still a little disappointed with this entry.
Seriously, will Mr. Arrington write about the flaws of his own startup, Edgeio?
If not, what will it say about TechCrunch?
Here’s an objective statistical comparison between Edgeio and Squidoo:
http://www.alex...com+squidoo.com
You can decide for yourself.
Yes, I’m also disappointed with this entry.
Mr. Arrington should write about the flaws of his own startup, Edgeio, first.
I don’t think a failed business idea should hurt someone’s credibility, per se. Startups have a high failure rate, and in my opinion it’s good that one wouldn’t let the (calculated) possibility of failure keep them from starting a business. If you look at overall success rates, Seth’s record is probably pretty good (although I admit I’m not familiar with his record).
Well, whether or not Squidoo works, one thing is clear. Seth’s book sales will increase just from the sheer discussion of the Squidoo both good and bad. Just look at this thread and how many mentions there are of Purple Cow.
this discussion should be restricted to Squidoo related posts…i think we all have the ability to find a more appropriate forum to post about whatever personal issues you have with edgeio or michael
I finally set up a Squidoo page. I must say the experience is very smooth and Ajax/Web2.0ish. In the end, none of the pages showed up in Google, and I kept thinking of it as About.com with nicer graphics and UI. Problem is that many lenses (loose the name) are low-quality, which begets more useless lenses. Overall a great idea and decent execution, but poor marketing, I never read anything about the service, anywhere. Better off starting a new blog.
Bad entry Mike. Sure, this is your blog, but you shouldn’t go about trashing a company that you feature. It is going to be difficult for future startups to trust techcrunch.
I recently read about both Squidoo and Zimbio and have started portals, or lenses, on both. I think they (Squidoo) know community collaboration to some extent is key to the site surviving. I can’t imagine they will continue with the current iteration and expect much, if anything, out of it. It will certainly be interesting to compare the growth rates of the two sites over the next little while.
Bob – To come to Mike’s defense here, I think this is the better comparison: http://www.alex...+techcrunch.com. One blogger v. thousands.
Sam, doesn’t that give Mike more credibility that he actually blogs what he feels, positive or negative?
Arrington you’re right on with this one. I’m a bit of a fan of Godin’s books (reading All Marketers Are Liars right now), but I agree that this site is underwhelming, to say the least.
There’s no doubt in my mind that other companies are doing similar stuff in this space. If Squidoo went towards a sort of “group of experts” thing, that may be successfull. It really comes down to the promotion, however.
The idea of Squidoo is a bit different than Wikipedia and it is not apparent that there is a clear winner in this space yet. If Godin really uses his “marketing expertise” on this one, they will be able to see some traction.
I think Mike’s right on with his assessment of Squidoo. I remember a co-worker of mine going batty over how Squidoo was going to revolutionize the way people find information. I checked it out and just kind of rolled my eyes. The analogy about Wikipedia and one entry for each person who wants to write one is about the best summing up I’ve heard of why Squidoo is a flop.
And I disagree that Mike’s losing credibility by not criqtiquing his other site. It’s also not a bad thing for him to say what he thinks, even if he features the site.
Although I do not know who Ryan, Dan, Bob, Ryan, and Sam Donaldson are, the obvious question is what expertise and experience do you actually have to make such negative comments about a successful entrepreneur who has clearly proven himself?
I agree with Mike – and I’ve got 3 different lenses on topics I am very fond of. It’s annoying that you can’t invite other people in to the collaboration. The money aspect is not what draws people in – but I can understand Squidoo’s financial need for it. Perhaps each Squidoo lens could give their finance to charity – and Squidoo take their skim off the top to finance themselves?
A couple of months ago, I noticed that a Top 100 lens had exactly ONE (1) rating (one visitor had rated it). I was shocked to see that–I wondered how a lens could make the top 100 with just one rating. That reduce Squidoo’s credibility a lot in my eyes and made me spend less time updating my lens.
And I also got that email Mike mentions. It has that blurb saying I can buy a cup of coffee. But the amount I had earned was $0.05. I’m not complaining I didn’t earn much, I was just surprised that they didn’t build something to filter the message for those that earned a small amount, that’s all. Probably unfair expectations, given I own 5 of his books, an audiobook, and read his blog daily.
But Seth is brilliant and if there was one person I could have on my board of directors, I think it would be him.
For a while I had the most profitable lense on squidoo. At first I thought it was pretty laughable as it’d only earned $10.21 (this is before they started paying lens masters) but as I thought about it I began to wonder what would happen if someone were to create hundreds of squidoo pages that earned a few dollars each month…. for a long time.
While I agree that it’s not had the viral like growth that I’m sure Seth and the team wanted – I do wonder whether it’s a bit too early to judge. What happens in another year when Squidoo is established in Google and starts getting referral traffic for instance?
I’m not convinced about it as a business model but I wonder if after just 6 or so months whether it’s too early to write off.
I don’t think there is anything inspiring about any of his books – not that I could actually finish any of them (but I gave it a shot). I remember after buying ‘survival is not enough’ I was actually angry at myself for being conned into it again!
I think that Seth’s work is nothing more than Harvard Business Review dumbed-down for the masses and for mass-consumption. And yes it is important that Squidoo is not a success, since Seth sells himself based on his track-record (he had one lucky hit which was in the beginning of the dot com era). This should make his next book very interesting (that is, if it isn’t a compilation of work from others)
In my opinion, it’s too soon to judge Squidoo’s success or failure. For sure, I think that one critical point for Squidoo is making sure that the first lens that will come out of every discovery channel will always be the best ones. It needs to make sure that the first ones to come from a Google search, a search on Squidoo’s site, a browsing on Squidoo’s site, etc., all share the fact that the very best lens come first. The more they will promote the best lens, and the more credibility they will build on the name of Squidoo. People will like to search on Squidoo. Lensmasters will want to improve their lenses. This will be viral.
In any case, I don’t believe that Squidoo’s failure would hinder Seth’s credibility. He himself teaches that however good and lucky you can be at marketing new things, only some of them will actually work. Seth may try as much as he likes – that’s ok with him and that’s ok with me.
Hey, see the link on my name on my last comment? It links to Compuware’s website, and that was not my intention, I’m sorry for that. My comments are *not* to be taken as Compuware’s comments; they are my personal comments only. (The website field has been auto-filled, I need to check my auto form-filling configuration.)
Squidoo only shows you how great of a marketer Seth Godin really is. It only goes to show that he can market shit and get results.
Alexa shows a 100+ million daily reach. That’s much better marketing than I can do.
After a cursory look at Squidoo…
It’s different from a blog ‘cos of the ‘evergreen’ content
It’s different from evergreen ‘cos of the ‘blog’ (incl. dynamic link?) content
It’s different from e.g. Myspace because the evergreen content is not (typically?) personal.
This niche could work… perhaps for very specialized content which is difficult to find elsewhere.
Prediction – Seth will write up a fantastic book on lessons learned from Squidoo, which will be taught in grad courses during the ramp up to whatever “Web 3.0″ ends up being.
I honestly don’t see his credibility taking much of a hit. Interesting idea which he gave a fair shot. That’s the whole spirit of startups.
anyone who describes Jeff Jarvis as ‘indispensable’ needs a little reality check.
I tested Squidoo back in December and decided as you suggest that the return on time investment would be marginal.
This was confirmed with my first Squidoo “pay” statement last week for a whopping 5 cents.
Thus Squidoo will indeed make me a million dollars, but it’ll take 1,666,667 years.
It’s doubtful that you’ll ever read “Edgeio: RIP?” like you did for Ning. Edgeio and Techcrunch with Arrington as the center of both create a huge conflict of interest. Forget about the fact that Nik “wrote” most of the Edgeio content — it doesn’t matter since he will never disparage Arrington’s company the way that Arrington does so many others.
Squidoo is no more of an albatross than Edgeio, but we’ll never hear the latter from Techcrunch.
Albatross, indeed.
I think it’s going to fail, too. There seems to be nothing to ensure that the lenses provide you with the “very best” knowledge on the subject.
The Squidoo site is littered with apples, oranges, and pickles–some lenses about big topics, some about narrow ones (probably the most successful) and some just promoting the author or their books.
The layout is wierd too. I don’t mind paging down, but an interface like the Google personalized page would just be so much better. There’s also something about that font that reminds me of classified Web ads–I always feel like someone is selling me something.
I think more people are coming to see Seth as a self-promoter whose ideas aren’t “all that”. Have you seen some of the reviews of his books? Publisher’s Weekly really criticized his All Marketers are Liars book as unethical.
#46 – Re my above, now who is Bill and what are his credentials?
Jenn, who are you, and what are your credentials? More importantly, what do credentials have to do with anything?
I find it absurd we can’t seem to debate on this forum. According to you, either we agree with Mike Arrington, or we shut up?
Bill presented his opinion. Like how I respect Mike’s opinion (even if I disagree), you should respect Bill’s…and anybody else’s who disagrees with you.
Welcome to the real world.
Go get ‘em, Jenn.
Bob, Bill, Ryan and others: I think its perfectly reasonable to draw comparisons as you do. I’d prefer you do it with your real name, but anonymous comments are turned on here for a reason (so people can vent).
I am a founder, but not an executive, of Edgeio. And if it fails, it will be covered here.
I can’t take shots at companies if I’m not willing to take them myself.
FWIW: My take on the criticism of the
author for this post?
I thought this was one of the most in depth and thoughtful reviews I have seen on techcrunch. Earlier reviews have often been much more superficial.
Whether you agree or disagree, it at least spurs discussion. (Personally Squidoo is unapealing to me – as someone said, why should I listen to some guy named Bob as the expert on a given subject).
I hope to see more reviews (positive or negative) from Techcruch in this vein.
Separately, I “hope” to see within the next month a thoughtful post on the author’s views of his Edgio experience to date.
regards
“a successful entrepreneur who has clearly proven himself?”
Jenn, are you referring to Mr. Godin?
This is kind of a mean thing to say, but, er, the best thing I found about Seth’s books are that they sell pretty well on Amazon.
I look at marketers that write marketing books like people that write get rich books. They got rich writing books and doing speeches, not in any principles they teach in their books.
I think this is similar to some of the push back that happened with Naked Conversations and Amazon. It all sounds fine and dandy, now let’s see it work.(not saying it doesn’t, I like the naked guys) Implementation is much harder than yelling from your soap box.
Good article Mike, reporting facts and showing your subjective analysis. A spade could be a club, but it is better to call it what it is. Fluff gets lost in the rest of the noise out there.
and to comment 5, read the Ancient Mariner, required 11th grade reading:
The shipmates, in their sore distress, would fain throw the whole guilt on the ancient Mariner : in sign whereof they hang the dead sea-bird round his neck.