Squidoo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Type | Search Engine |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 |
| Headquarters | Hastings on Hudson, NY, USA |
| Key people | Seth Godin, Founder. Megan Casey, Editor in Chief |
| Industry | Internet |
| Revenue | Unknown |
| Employees | 6 |
| Website | www.squidoo.com |
Squidoo is a community website based in Hastings on Hudson, N.Y. that allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest. Lenses are interactive, and can contain Flickr photos, Google maps, blogs, eBay auctions, YouTube videos, and other links. Squidoo is in the top 500 most visited sites in the world, and in the top 200 most viewed in the United States.[1] It has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity.
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[edit] History
Development on Squidoo started in 2005, launching a beta testing period in October of that year.[2] The launch team consisted of Seth Godin, his book editor Megan Casey, former Fast Company employee Heath Row, Corey Brown, and Gil Hildebrand, Jr. Upon its announcement, Seth Godin, Squidoo's CEO, released a free ebook titled "Everyone's an Expert."[3] The ebook outlines the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, and then goes on to detail lenses and their effectiveness as a "nowblog."
The site came out of beta testing two months later and reached 100,000 lenses within the first six months. It now has more than 900,000 lenses and grew 91% in 2008.
Squidoo owes its name to the squid, which has eyes containing large lenses, analogous to Squidoo's lenses which as Godin notes, "provide a view on the world."[4] It ends in "oo" since tech companies with two "o"s in their name -- Google, Yahoo!, Godin's own Yoyodyne -- have all been a success.[4]
[edit] Site structure
Squidoo is a user-generated website which uses the concept of a lens as its primary feature. In his ebook "Everyone's an Expert," Godin describes a lens as "[filtering] light and [showing] us what we need to see." Specifically, a lens can be treated much like a blog, except it is on a single subject, and can contain links to Amazon.com, Ebay, and other external sites.[4] Users creating lenses, called "lensmasters," can be anyone with a passion for a specific subject, and do not necessarily have to be renowned experts. In Squidoo's early stages, Godin notes that Martha Stewart and Jane Goodall's lenses did not receive large amounts of traffic, whereas lenses on MySpace and the online game line rider were among the site's most successful.[5] Squidoo has a Top 100 lenses list by topic, by rank, by group and for Giant lenses. There are about 22 different topics such as Health & Medicine, Food & Cooking, and Business.
Although lenses can technically be built independently as a webpage or a blog post, Godin notes that the site owes its success to two factors. Firstly, Squidoo users can build pages without learning code.[5] Secondly, pages can achieve built-in popularity due to their association with thousands of other pages, an attribute which Godin names the "proximity effect."[5] Due to this, Squidoo is self-sustainable, underscored by the fact that Squidoo has just 6 employees, whereas other companies like Digg or Mahalo have a few hundred.[5]
Squidoo also employs a unique payment scheme: 5% of its revenue goes to charity, 50% goes to the lensmasters, and 45% goes to Squidoo. The lens and Squidoo rely on advertising and affiliate links to create revenue.[6] Nearly half of lensmasters donate their royalties to any of 65 featured charities, ranging from NPR and the American Heart Association to smaller organizations like Chimp Haven and Planet Gumbo. In October 2008, Squidoo donated $80,000 to charity.
[edit] Reception
Since its debut, Squidoo has been profiled in CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, and The Washington Post.[4][7][8][6] It's been criticized by Jason Calcanis for search engine optimization.[9] The site was given top prize in SXSW's community/wiki category.[10] Squidoo has challenged established information websites like About and eHow for traffic, while still remaining ahead of newer models like Mahalo and HubPages.[7][11]
[edit] Spam issue
Squidoo has been known for spam issues due to the fact that its contributors are paid.[12] This lead Google to penalize the website and remove it from high ranking positions.[13]
[edit] See also
- HubPages is a web publishing company with a similar business model
- Wikipedia, a user generated encyclopedia
[edit] References
- ^ Squidoo.com traffic details Alexa.com.
- ^ The next free ebook (Squidoo!) Seth Godin's blog. October 7, 2005.
- ^ Godin, Seth Everyone's An Expert: The Search for Meaning Online
- ^ a b c d Wong, Grace Make Money with Squidoo CNN Money. February 10, 2006.
- ^ a b c d Interview of Seth Godin on Squidoo Stone Temple Consulting. June 20, 2007.
- ^ a b Squidoo.com Washington Post. January 8, 2006.
- ^ a b A Home Where Bloggers Can Plumb Those Obscure Passions The New York Times. April 10, 2006.
- ^ Tahmincioglu, Eve Beware of social networking overload MSNBC. July 21, 2008.
- ^ Is Squidoo becoming a massive, dirty SEO back alley? calcanis.com.
- ^ Squidoo Honored at 10th SXSW Interactive Web Awards on Vigit Labs. March 14, 2007
- ^ Unique Visitors between Squidoo, Mahalo, and HubPages compete.com.
- ^ http://gigaom.com/2007/07/08/squidoo-spam/
- ^ http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/10/google-acting-against-squidoo-due-to-spam/
