Squidoo: Seth Godin’s Purple 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.sergetheconcierge.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.alexaholic.com/squidoo.com+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.alexaholic.com/edgeio.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.alexaholic.com/squi.....crunch.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.

“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.”

There are different Top 100 categories - i’m guessing the one you were looking at was based on traffic (ranking, which is different from rating). Rating (the “stars”) is given by other people based on emotional appeal - which may or may not have anything to do with your content.

A good example is my lens on Jenny Shimizu. It gets a lot of traffic, but i’m guessing due to a lot of negative publicity lately, people are curious about her (lesbian supermodel) but they’re not fond of her (tattooed greasemonkey) as opposed to say, Angelina Jolie. Hence its LensRank is somewhere in the mid-30s (at the point of writing) and rated at two stars.

Your lens(es) could still make it in the Top 100 of the “most blogged about”, or “most e-mailed” … etc.

It’s early days yet for Squidoo. Personally, I’m surprised that Squidoo lenses show up a lot in Google searches. Having launched only some time late last year, there are already more than 20,000 lenses at present - that is no small feat and I’m utterly in awe of that.

Marketing is an art and not a science. A scientist might lose her credibility if her theories get disproved in real life. But a marketer gets many more chances since one hit can make up for many many misses. I don’t think Mr. Godin loses any credibility even if Squidoo doesn’t succeed. Besides, a product is much more than how it is marketed.

My credentials are I am hotter, richer, smarter, and younger than you are. Wan’t to date my grandma?

You have some good points [my first comment here, so Hello! :)]. I haven’t tried out Squidoo yet, and wanted to mention something about Wikipedia: regarding it being an authority, its authority has been disputed a lot lately, specially by major encyclopedia companies, and almost all of UC and CSU campuses in California do not allow it to be used in any research or in any form of citation. That’s almost 1 million + [guessing] full time and part time students, undergrad, alone. Just wanted to mention that, maybe it might mean or hint at some kind of a trend.

Hmm, my grandma is hot. Want to swap?

Seriously, let’s not degenerate this into a Myspace style 15 year old rant about irrelevancy.
Squidoo is a very clever play on single point, highly focused, passion driven content. The whole point of web 2.0 is user contributed content. Most of it is crap. Squidoo raises itself above that by having people with genuine interests and knowledge contribute that back into the online universe. Whether it works or not, the intention is honorable and puts the onus on the contributors. And that is what this space is all about.

Squidoo is kinda like a wiki that’s a lot more annoying to populate. I think the idea was there, with the rich features and with the module concept, but when I tried putting a bunch of work into mine, I found that I didn’t feel like updating it much when I was done.

You know who did a great series of lenses that work well together? Dave Gray, founder and CEO of XPLANE. His Visual Thinking School series of lenses is really interesting.

I liked your post on this, Mike. I’m a fan of Seth, but Squidoo is the albatross.

(Oh, for whoever thought it was a mixed metaphor: Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.)

I read somewhere that Squidoo performed a spam attempt on Wikipedia, basically trying to be the millionth article. Seems they missed it by one article.

Squidoo lost me at that point. Anyone who would spam Wikipedia deserves to fail. And I am really hoping that their lame, failed attempt actually backfires. I know for me it did - I will never visit that site again, and will always think of Squidoo as evil.

Supposedly there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Well, this “stunt” smelled bad, is bad, and hopefully will lead to Squidoo’s ultimate demise.

Dear Offended,

Squidoo didn’t spam wikipedia. In fact, there was an entire thread on this within wikipedia, and it was unanimously decided that:
a. it was a worthy article
and
b. it wasn’t from Squidoo. A squidoo user submitted the article.

So, you can like Squidoo again.

Probably to early to judge - but I have to agree with some people here that the most disappointing for me is to see that a lens with 1 or 2 readers makes it into the top 100. Credibility issue?

The irony in all this is that this press from TechCrunch / Michael are the exact opposite of the kind of the press Seth would hope to be garnering for a remarking product. It’s a bad sign when major influencers start yelling LAME isntead of WAY COOL.

If he can’t convince Michael with his story, there isn’t much hope for people who aren’t as REALLY INTO the tech / ideas as those on Techcrunch.

In my opinion, one of the biggest major factors is the fact that lenses are too personal, there is no group interaction. I can’t find peers or those with similiar interests to collaborate with them on expanding the group knowledge.

Squidoo doesn’t seem to have a policy for “lense squatting”. I registered a bunch of lenses for popular terms and they are just sitting in my account empty. There seems to be no limit as to how many lenses a single person can register and any quality control on if they can be taken back.

Glass houses, big guy.

Seth Godin is over rated. Sure, he had success at Yahoo! (that’s great!) but I think his commentary on Marketing is just that, commentary used to sell cute books with funny names and cover art. He does make you think but I find very little take-away from reading any of his books.

I am so tired of hearing about Seth Godin this and Seth Godin that. Anyone watch the vid-cast of him at Google? What a joke!

Come back Pud (FuckedCompany.com), all is forgiven!
Seriously, a bit of critical attention to our beloved 2.0 companies is excellent. You can be sure that within a year or two we’ll be in a flameout where this mild crit on Squidoo will be looked back on fondly. There are a lot of crap 2.0 projects out there, but never forget, every one of ‘em has a mother (for the time being - since success has many parents but failure is an orphan).

As much as I agree and disagree with some of what was said in the review (and the subsequent bitching in the comments!), there can be no denying that Seth has a great history and a proven track record of - if Google listen to him, why the hell shouldn’t we at least CONSIDER what he has to say.

On the other hand, what I think is important to learn is that all comments are made by potential users of squidoo (writers or readers).

Anyone whose product or service gets reviewed and discussed on any major forum should, as a matter of course, either listen carefully or follow up each of the comments to understand how the business model may be better adapted or the product tweaked to ensure total satisfaction.

I have made two comments on this site and on both occasions the CEO’s have written to me to understand why i said what I did and asked me for my opinion on other things.

Don’t doubt for one minute that someone at Squidoo isn’t following these conversations - after all, without feedback how can anyone expect to improve their product?

It will never be a wikipedia type site because the people that create lenses will be wooed by the chance to make a buck, not the chance to spread knowledge. I could probably make a killer lens about the rule against perpetuities, but that won’t get many adsense clicks - so it’s left out. This almost guarantess it will be a spam haven.

Seth saw a bunch of things happening on the web and tried to lump them all together - he’s trying to do too much.

Finally, Arrington offers an opinion…which is bullshit anyway, reflected by many other “bloggers” before he publishes his. I sure as shit don’t read this blog for any “real” analysis of any startups, only to see what’s out there. Arrington, if you’re listening, either let us know what you’re thinking on EVERY startup or just keep this list of companies coming, afraid to piss anyone off…

Cheers.

wow, there sure is a lot of ‘hot or not’ and success jealousy here (on all sides), and not a lot of clear thinking going on. [shakes head sadly]

really enjoyed this thread*

i’ve been banging my head trying to think of a way to monetize the web* yeah it’s a dirty word but it doesn’t necessarily have to be*

my $Billion Baloney kinda fizzled & another Angel has kinda been done with http://www.favorville.com - altho that would legitimize the space & lead to a giant bidding war between Google & Microsoft & Yahoo so that might be a Good thing!!

a Eureka Lightbulb went off in my head last night & it just might work! It’s Viral, Web2.0, Sticky, Fun & WIN WIN*

It even goes after both the Long Tail & the Huge FAT Short tail aka MySpace!!*

In order to pull this off I’m prolly gonna need the Resources of Google but maybe just maybe it can be done!

If anyone feels like helping or collaborating by all means give me a Shout!

Cheers!! Billy ;))

p.s. I used to love those Xplane’s in Biz 2.0 too Chris!!

Squidoo.com is also painfully slow for the lensmaster and the regular visitor. Doesn’t help the situation.

I wrote about this back in March, a look at Squidoo from the eyes of Alexa, and what prognosticators would start saying about the death of Squidoo. A month later, here we are.

http://blog.jbyers.com/2006/03.....e-squidoo/

Bottom line: the Squidoo team now has a huge amount of data about what does and doesn’t work in their service. They’ve also got a nice base level of traffic - not YouTubian traffic, but enough to turn dials and see results. Seth and his team will fail only if they fail to change. Does Seth seem like the kind of guy who’s afraid of change?

This isn’t Seth’s 1st failure. (and won’t be his last)

All Marketers are Liars was a flop.

I personally thought “free prize inside” was a re-write of Purple Cow.

And he constantly throws out ideas on his blog that are bad and immediatley shot down.

It’s part of what happens when he “practices what he preaches” about edgecraft. Some of it’s liked and some of it’s not.

But I agree after my 15 cent Squidoo payment that Squidoo is a failure.

One of Seth’s problems is that Squidoo’s idea of a bunch of “definitive links on the topic X” is pretty much covering the same ground as (read in competition with) the OPML Editor / Share My OPML. Definitive reading lists / world directory etc.

Possibly the smart thing to do would be for Seth to get with the program. Allow lenses to be imported and exported as OPML files, allow people to manage them in the OPML editor exactly as they manage their WordPress blog. Squidoo could become the place to host your outlines if you want to put AdSense on them.

That’s pretty much like myspace. Also “Lensmaster” doesn’t sound cool. Please have a look at http://web2.0slides.com/ if you haven’t already. That’s nice WebTwoZero-stuff (the idea).

Here’s a stab at a solution, inspired by Newsvine: creating lenses about lenses, a lens aggregator around topics.

So in practice, the “web design” macro-lens would be an amalgamation of all the web design lenses below it. That would be a good step towards addressing two of your critiques - not only would collective intelligence bubble up rather than relying solely on individual expertise, but gain a network effect by chaining related lenses together and lead to an internal Myspace-style clickstream for users (the site would keep the personal touch of each individual while gaining). This strategy could have the potential to marry the individual and collective well, related to Digg and Tailrank and others but also allowing for content generation and not just consumption. Newsvine would be the only other similar model that I can think of.

Just a thought - not sure if this comment list is too long for anyone to notice

Let’s start with the names: both “Squidoo” and “Lensmasters” need polish. I haven’t heard anyone bumping these in my hood.

Oops - should have read “the site would keep the personal touch of each individual while gaining the neighborhood effect of grouping people by interests.”

Hi all,

I got a check for $22 from Squidoo this month, and some of my lenses get 400 uniques a week and have Google page ranks of 3 or 4. One such lens ranks 28th in Google for a competitive term.

I know I will never make significant monies from Squidoo, but I think its value to SEO is impressive. It has worked well for me in tandem with real domains. Don’t stick a fork in it yet.

I tried Squidoo, and it seemed useless to me, although I’ve been blogging for five years. Everything I can do on it I can do on something else. It just seems like a superfluous product — a marketer’s answer to a problem that may not exist. And by the way, I love Seth, so I was reluctant to say anything until everyone else did. (I’m a sheep, not a purple cow, I guess.)

RE: “Let’s start with the names: both “Squidoo” and “Lensmasters” need polish.”

The labels would seem much cooler if the product was more successful.

I’m with Dave #91, above.

It’s not really realistic to assume that your Squidoo lens is ever going to make you rich, but it damn sure will make you easier to find in search engines.

Reality check: It’s free, it’s designed for professionals, and at the end of the day, it just might earn you enough to buy a cup of coffee every so often.

There’s a lot of Web 2.0 social networking products out there competing for attention…how many of them offer you adsense revenue so easily?

It’s way to early to decide the fate of Squidoo; lively discussions like this one only contribute to its inevitable growth.

Somewhere, Seth is smiling.

Got tired of reading comments and can’t tell if this idea was commented already…

Allow people to rank the lens for it’s usefulness. When you do a search term, sort them by user ranking.

Worried about illicit rankings? Make people sign in for ranking… or use those funky text/graphic boxes to verify it’s a live person… or put up two ranks… one by signed in LensMasters (peer review) and the other by the general public visiting.

None of the above is uncommon or difficult… and may make it worth going back to squidoo and seeing what NEW site / author / business / contact / etc… I can find.

ummm… may be on to something here. Google gives contectual robot rankings… del.ico.us and others look at individual articles… Squidoo could be the source for SITE or PERSON relevancy.

Hey Bill - I have written favourably about Edgeio’s competitors, and the Edgeio review I did was while Mike was away. I keep my writing honest and unbiased and don’t have any regrets.

Hey Michael @ #73 - if a lens gets a rating from 2 people, it doesn’t mean that it has only 2 readers. It means that only 2 people have *bothered* to rate it.

The fact that squidoo warrants so many remarks in the comments to this post… means it is ‘remarkable’… No?

I am overjoyed with Squidoo, then again as of May 11th I am the number one Lensmaster, with the top 3 lense on Squidoo. (10 lense in the top 100 and 100 in the top 1,000 )

To the usual naysayers, first thank you for giving up so easy, for those that are workin it and having fun, keep going!!!

Traffic:Well beyond what I expected
Income: WOW real income made from very easy,simple pages.

I have been #1 for a month now, someone please challenge me, before I get bored.
Yep,a bit of an ego LOL

Jeffry–might you be willing to state how much income you’ve earned? There are never any real numbers shared.

Squidoo needs to be transparent — see:

http://bloodandtreasure.com/Squidoo060405.html

Hi Lisa

I would find it completrly unacceptable

HAHA
That was funny my cat submitted comment sorry

Anyways

Hi Lisa
Like most people I feel that my sources and amounts of income, should be kept private.
I will say it was for March (The first paying month) it was 10 times my projected income.

Ok, but we know from the email and the blog post on Squidoo that the most anyone made was $40…