This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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Seth Godin’s much ballyhooed Squidoo project came out of private beta today, and there’s quite a bit of buzz about it. Most of it is positive, of course. After all, it IS Seth Godin. I’ve never found any excitement for Squidoo, however, despite my appreciation for many of Seth’s ideas. The basic idea, as I understand it, is Squidoo is a platform for anyone to create what is called a lense. According to the Squidoo site:
"A lens is one person’s (lensmaster’s) view on a topic he cares about.
More specifically, a lens is a single web page filled with information
and links that point to other web pages, to continually updated RSS
feeds, or to relevant advertising. It’s a place to start, not finish."
Don’t we already have something that does that? It’s called a blog. The only advantage I can see about a Squidoo lense is it gives the reader a one-page snap-shot of everything about the "lensemaster," including who they are, what they do and have done, and the things they’re interested in. For that part of it, I commend the Squidoo team. Most of us could certainly do a better job at content management and presentation.
What might impress me about Squidoo – if they could make it happen – is to allow me to create my lense and then somehow integrate it into my own blog. Now that would be a nice little utility. Otherwise, it seems like a waste of time and energy to go create my lense when I could spend that time and energy creating/improving my own blog (and lately, I certainly need that).
The only other less than neutral comments I’ve been able to find on Squidoo are from uber-blogger Steve Rubel, who writes:
"I really don’t see what the big deal is about this product. I tried it
during the private beta and found it very confusing. I recommend having
your own blog instead – at least for now. If the Squidoo network grows
and becomes important then I might change my position."
In summary, I’ll say go ahead and check out Squidoo in your spare time, but it’s no purple cow in my book.