SQUIDOO : WHY YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT

November 7, 2007

The problem with Google

Everybody uses Google when we want to find something. It’s become a verb in our language… “I Googled Homemade Pizza Recipes and found …”. The problem is that the end of that sentence goes “… 17,586,890 hits.”

Nobody ever looks past page 2, maybe even not past the first 10 hits, even though the one you’d really love is buried on page 23 somewhere. I use Google when I know what I’m looking for, I just have to lock in on where to find it.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just call a friend?

The best way to find what you need to know about Homemade Pizza would be to call your friend who is a pizza expert. She’s tried every recipe. She buys the flour in a special place and knows exactly which type of cooking sheets are best. Unfortunately, she’s out of town.

You have a choice. You could try a recipe you’ve never made before and hope for the best or you could ask an expert, right here.

Seth Godin

Seth writes and speaks about marketing and about how ideas spread. He writes the first blog I ever read and the one that led me to all the others including my own. He talks about respect for others and common sense in marketing, with advice that people listen to and follow. He’s brilliant at looking down the road and thinking about how the way we do business will evolve as yesterday’s new technologies become old.

He is the inventor of Squidoo. He coined the term ‘ideavirus’, which describes the way ideas spread simply by people talking about them instead of being beaten over the head by unwanted advertising (see the book Unleashing the Ideavirus, and all Seth’s books here). You learned about the Macarena from another person. You’re hearing about Squidoo from me. The idea spreads among people like a virus.

This is where marketing and advertising are headed, right? We all have our antennae up to detect and reject the sales pitch that’s forced on us everywhere we go. He created a place where everyone’s expertise in their part of the world could be shared only with those who want to hear about it. That place is a website called Squidoo.

For anyone interested in hearing more from this man whom so many idolize, and about how Squidoo came to be, here’s a great interview led by Eric Enge of StoneTemple Consulting, an internet marketing company. It’s long but well worth reading; bookmark the page in your browser so you can read it later.

The Squidoo system

If you have spent years perfecting your knowledge of the world’s best coffee, why not share it with others? You create a web page, or ‘lens’, on the topic.

There are now almost 300,00 lenses. Are you going to France, my dream destination, along with Italy ? Spend some time here, it’s lovely.

Want to take up rubber stamping? This is the place to get to the core of what you need.

There are 98 lenses on kayaking. There are 96 on woodworking including this one that has the best title I’ve seen ( you’ve got to go look at it to see it).

You are guided through the easiest 5-step sign up process I’ve ever seen. You then have your own ‘lensmaster workshop” where you begin to create your own lens. It’s pretty easy and there’s lots of help.

You can see that every lens is divided into sections, or modules. There are many different kinds. You can easily show books in the Amazon module, where you just copy the link and Squidoo will find the price, release date, and put the picture up there for you, with all the Amazon info. Same with a You Tube clip, just copy and paste the link info, no different than copy and paste in Word, and Squidoo will put it into your module ready to be clicked and viewed.

Some lenses are actually selling or promoting a product, like this one on glorious food gifts.

Some folks built a lens about people they admire for the Who Is section, like these on Oprah and Martha Stewart.

It is true that there are some lenses that seem to be just lists of books or YouTube clips pertaining to a topic, I think the system works better, and the lens is more useful and interesting, if some effort has been made on the part of the lensmaster to filter through all that material and select the great stuff. That’s really what Squidoo is about. I can Google and find those lists.

My lens is there to tell people about this blog, but also because Squidoo looks to me like the company I want to keep. If you want to see my first lens, click on the box with the squid on the right side of this page.

Squidoo looks after all the organization stuff in the sidebars. Google puts up ads it thinks are appropriate. If the ads make any $, you can keep it or send it one of about a hundred charities, or split it between the two. You choose this in the sign up process – I chose a chimpanzee sanctuary called Chimp Haven and I feel really good about that.

The best of the best of what you want to know

I don’t really relate to Facebook. Truth be known, I’m not anxious to reconnect with my high school friends. I don’t live back there. I never find much to do at Digg or StumbleUpon either though I recognize that letting people vote on what news stories make it to the top is a great idea. I’m not looking for a job so I never go to LinkedIn.

Squidoo, I love. Squidoo is what I wish the social networking sites were more like. The greatness of the web is the connectedness between people and the ease of information exchange. Squidoo preselects people that share something with you, all interested and interesting. Everyone has something great to talk about or they wouldn’t be there, rather similar to blogs. You can find people who would love to include you in a conversation about great learning, reading, resources, and events.

What would you tell someone?

When your friends are looking for information on growing your own herbs, is it you they call?

What question would you most love to be asked? Is there a topic you could talk about for hours? If you could distill your knowledge down to the essentials, what would it look like? Can you filter out all the things you tried that didn’t work and take a beginner right to the best information, based on your expert recommendation?

Squidoo is exactly what I am about

I have no time to waste but so much I want to learn. I want to spend my time with remarkable people who have a passion about a topic and can take me to the meaning of that subject fast.

Every lens is quality, personalized material. It is amazingly easy to search your topic. The great folks at Squidoo monitor the lenses to make sure no junk appears.

As much as I admire the power of the web, its size contributes to its weakness because the best material can be hard to find. The absolute brilliance of this site is that you choose what you want to see, when you want to see it, and then you move on, better informed than when you got there. Seth’s god-like reputation is based largely on his astonishing capacity for forward-thinking. He certainly proves it with Squidoo.

I am completely addicted to Squidoo, and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Sites To Know