A VC« Country Honk | Main | Some Lens Love »
Squidoo Goes Live
My friends Seth and Tommy have been working on this project for at least six months.
I've watched them at work and have given them my feedback along the way.
And now I can blog about it. Because Squidoo went live for the public today.
I built two lenses a while back. They need work, but here they are. I hope you like them.
If you are an expert about something, care about something, make money at something, go build a lens about it and let me know about it.
Comments (12) | | TrackBack (4)
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b2c969e200e5503684078834
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Squidoo Goes Live:
» Squidoo has launched from microISV
Fred Wilson notes that Squidoo has gone live today. Squidoo is where an expert can create a Lens on a topic and aggregate data related to that specific topic. There are already six microISV related Lens.
mISV
MicroISV
How to create your own o... [Read More]
Tracked on Dec 7, 2005 12:40:14 PM
» Squidoo goes live from Russell Page
Squidoo went live today. I tried out the beta a few weeks ago, and at that time, I wasnt allowed to comment on the experience.
I wasnt that impressed. But, it was a beta. Well have to see what its like now. I really don... [Read More]
Tracked on Dec 7, 2005 2:52:39 PM
» ON YAHOO! ANSWERS, SQUIDOO AND THE SEARCH FOR KNOWLEDGE from *michael parekh on IT*
ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE With the announcement today of Yahoo! Answers, the company seems to be evolving from it's decade-old, original acronym Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle to the source for Yet Additional Hordes of Opinionated Oracles. F... [Read More]
Tracked on Dec 8, 2005 12:15:29 PM
» I am a Lensmaster at Squidoo from RadicalStu Blog
I’m not entirely sure of its value as yet but I have been playing around with it and it is remarkably easy to pull together a useful site. With a few minutes work I created two lenses. [Read More]
Tracked on Dec 9, 2005 2:36:08 PM
Posted December 7, 2005 in Venture Capital and TechnologyComments
Well, finally a site just for me, the expert on everything.
Posted by: jackson | Dec 7, 2005 9:43:31 AM
Squidoo is definitely a fun project, I'm building a few lenses in some spare time. Here's the first one worth mentioning:
http://www.squidoo.com/wakeboarding/
I like what've got going with the modules and being able to pull RSS feeds, get Amazon products in, etc. I think there will be a lot of power here as they keep adding powerful modules to the mix.
Posted by: Pat McCarthy | Dec 7, 2005 2:22:07 PM
Not impressed. When is somebody going to build a site for the masses. All new sites are not designed for the general public. The problem with this site is that I'm a geek and I don't think it fills avoid. If you can't attract a geek who can you attract?
Posted by: anna | Dec 7, 2005 3:15:59 PM
Seth and friends are doing a nice job -- it's been interesting seeing how the various modules grew through the beta, and I would guess they've got more to come.
The Squidoo folks were kind enough to send along a beta invitation, and so I put together a microfinance lens. Of course, this is evolving as well; comments appreciated.
Posted by: Ken Liffiton | Dec 7, 2005 5:38:31 PM
I was also part of the private beta team, and am working on sneezing Squidoo, too. But I must say, feedback from the gp (general public) has been less than enthusiastic.
They don't get it, yet. And...I think there needs to be some serious messaging around Squidoo. The ClickZ article I refer to did a good job explaining it, I thought, even in the first two paragraphs.
I think it could be huge. I think it's a brilliant concept. But, just like many of its newborn lenses, Squidoo just needs a little time to grow and flourish.
In any case, I'm glad to be along for the journey.
Posted by: tracy sheridan | Dec 7, 2005 6:07:00 PM
I've also been part of the early closed beta but haven't used it much, admittedly. I think that if done properly (and it is being done properly so far, from what I can see) there is real value in centralizing a human-generated set of collected resources.
The advantage of the lens is that you know that it's likely that someone who really understands X is doing the editing/weeding-through job regarding X for you. This is the same value other evolving services are helping people achieve, in various different ways.
Now let's extrapolate for a second or two and consider the resource that Squidoo could become if enough concerned users participate... a searchable database of edited/carefully selected _useful_ and _relevant_ resources that help you figure out X and learn about X. Beats pagerank for research, I guarantee you.
Posted by: Bosko Milekic | Dec 7, 2005 6:53:28 PM
I think Squidoo should do a hack like the one over at http://burm.net/google/mapchat_with_ajax
The service just looks like a Wikipedia wannabe right now.
I think the differentiating quality is for Squidoo to stress interactivity between readers and Lensmasters.
Interacting with an expert is something I can't do on Wikipedia, and is something I should be able to do on Squeedoo.
Email is dead...so you should try IM.
If this turns into a community where experts are incentivised to depart information to readers, who knows....there might be a future.
Posted by: Daniel Nerezov | Dec 7, 2005 10:43:13 PM
I read your blog out of morid curiosity. I
think you are very thoughtful and informative. I have gotten a few giggles and a couple of all-out guffaws over some of the comments left here. The high and mighty brilliant tech people need to lighten up a little.
I am delurking to share my lens with you: http://www.squidoo.com/fabulousshopping/
I love Squidoo. The layout is simple and easy to use. And I am excited that I got in on it at the beginning. I will be a big sneezer (are you vc people still using that term?) for them.
The "gp" needs to hear about Squidoo. I wouldn't have known if I wasn't reading your blog.
Posted by: gina | Dec 8, 2005 12:51:44 AM
I think they seriouslyneed to change the layout. Everyone I've shown it too agrees that the pages look like those ad/spam pages you see when someone has a domain name parked but isn't using it. If you have Seth's ear, you might want to recommend that.
Posted by: TheStalwart | Dec 8, 2005 2:14:34 AM
TWO THUMBS DOWN..... WAY DOWN. I agree with anna up top. It's not that I don't get it, its just not worth my time.
Posted by: MJ | Dec 8, 2005 9:55:19 AM
clipmarks is better! WHY DOES IT SEEM LIKE YOU PROMOTE YOUR FRIENDS AND YOUR INVESTMENTS ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY? how you missed clipmarks is mind boggling to me.
Posted by: Adam Moskowitz | Dec 8, 2005 2:42:34 PM
The concept is similar to that of oondi (http://www.oondi.com) except that oondi will pay out 100% of the advertisement profits to the authors. Their hosting costs are covered by clicks which occur on non-author owned pages like the index but I suppose it's basically a non-profit organization similar to Wikipedia rather than a commercial one like HubPages or Squidoo.
Posted by: Ken | Jun 16, 2007 2:03:25 PM
Main RSS Feed of All Posts
VC and Technology Posts Only
