Squidblog

We invited another few hundred people to participate in Squidoo’s beta test this afternoon. If you requested a beta invitation and haven’t been asked to join us yet, don’t worry. We’ll invite more testers as the beta test continues.

If you haven’t requested an invitation yet, it’s not too late: You can still do so. Even if you don’t get in, you’ll among the first to know when we open to the public.

True story from Kate about how blogs don’t always make the first impression the blogger might like: My Name is Kate: The real reason we need Seth Godin’s Squidoo…

So, our amazing (and tiny) squad of beta testers have built a few hundred lenses. Some of them are pretty thin, some really jump off the page.

What’s the difference?

If you get a chance, take a look at Seth’s lens. I designed this page as an example of chunking and storytelling.

Chunking, because the best lenses divide the world into tiny bite-sized chunks. A long long list of links (which is what most web pages that fashion themselves as lenses contain) is completely useless to the average human. The goal here, remember, is not completeness, it’s to give me a toehold. The best bookstores have a little display at the cash register to get you excited about exploring the bookstore and buying stuff. The smartest people I know don’t spend all day showing off how much they know–instead, they focus on a few topics and make it easy for the people they’re dealing with to engage in a conversation.

Same thing happens on a great lens. You expose a few points, just a few, maybe as many as five. Then move on to another module.

Less, not more.

Which leads to storytelling. The point of a great lens is to convert someone from a stranger into someone with enough confidence to actually click on something. Remember, on almost every single page on the entire web, the single-most clicked on button is BACK. Your goal is to have a narrative, to tell a story that unfolds and makes it easy for people to get what you’re up to.

So, as we expand the beta and you get your chance to make your first lens, or if you want to build a lens somewhere else, make it chunky.

We kicked off Squidoo’s closed beta test today, inviting just a few hundred people to help us kick the tires and refine the platform before our public beta launch. It’s probably an understatement to say we’re excited. These are the first people, outside of our small team, to see what we’ve been building. It’s not perfect, it’s not done, but it’s ready to try.

If you requested a beta invitation and didn’t make the first wave, don’t worry. We’ll be inviting additional testers on a rolling basis as the beta test progresses.

And if you haven’t requested an invitation yet, it’s not too late: Just ask. Even if you don’t get in, you’ll still be the first to know when we launch.

Some of our biggest heroes in the blogosphere and beyond are on the A List.

Squidoo, however, is about the You List.

Yesterday, one of my colleagues joked that his blog had finally joined the ranks of the
C List. I told him he’s on the A List. He is. He may not have the traffic yet. Or the name. Or the placement on the rosters that track those things. But he shares his insights with authority and passion. His ideas are respected. And so they spread.

The point is that he acts like an A Lister. Squidoo is a new way for people–everyday people–to better assert their enthusiasm and expertise about countless topics.

You’re already on the A List. You just don’t know it yet.

Make yourself matter where it counts.

Thanks for all the public discussion about Squidoo. All this blogging has sort of blown us away–we’re thrilled that people are so interested in what we’re up to.

There are two questions that seem to come up the most.

How will we resolve which lenses show up?

Wikipedia has a system with one entry per topic. We don’t. Instead, we encourage multiple lenses on a topic. Then, we use an automated algorithm to rank the lenses. We look at user ratings, lensmaster reputation, clickthrough rates, frequency of updates and other factors and give the lens a number. And we make it clear to the lensmaster what her rank is and how to improve it. If we do our job right, every time you do a search, we’ll choose the best lens from among the relevant matches and show it to you. Of course, it’s easy for a surfer to see all the lenses, not just the highest ranked one.

How will lensmasters get paid?

There are two columns in a lens. The column on the left features your content. And you’re welcome to include as many affiliate modules in this column as you like. (An affiliate deal is a revenue share with a store like Amazon. They pay a commission on sales). We set up all these deals for you (with thousands of merchants) that pay commissions and a portion of that revenue is credited to you. The right hand column features one small box with keyword advertising in it. That revenue goes into a pool and is distributed to lenses based on traffic and other factors. The details of our revenue-sharing will be as transparent as we can make them, and as the beta progresses, we’ll go into all of the ins and outs with our lensmasters.

Next week, the first stage of Squidoo’s closed beta test begins. We’re excited to finally see how people take to the platform — and we’re looking forward to their help squashing bugs before our public beta launch later this fall.

While we are limiting the number of beta testers (we can’t involve everyone, yet), we’re still accepting requests to participate. If you’d like to ask for an invite, you can do so here.

We launched the ebook about Squidoo on Friday, in conjunction with a brief presentation at ecomXpo. A quick look at Technorati today shows nearly 70 posts about the launch.

Does that count as “launch big”? No New York Times articles, no press conferences–in fact, nothing that cost money, needed a VIP pass or involved a lot of networking.

What’s neat is that most of those posts tell the Squidoo story just the way we’d tell it. They’ve started establishing the groundwork for what we’re trying to build and are making it easier for people to understand a new thing.

Who needs the ads and the press release when there are hundreds of people interested in creating meaning… not for you, but with you.

Without understanding, without meaning, no one takes action.

We’ve built a platform that makes it easy for anyone, even a newbie, to teach people about topics they care about. We believe that everyone is an expert about something, and the Squidoo.com platform is designed to make it easy to do that.

It’s a guide (like about.com) and a reference (like wikipedia.com). It’s a place for personal expression (like typepad.com) and an open platform for real people (like del.ico.us).

You’re probably too busy to have a blog that’s up-to-date all the time, but we’re betting that there’s a topic (even if the topic is ‘you’) that you’d like to start the conversation about.

I wrote down my thoughts in a new ebook called Everyone’s an Expert. You can get it for free, here.

Here’s my short take on what you’ll find in the ebook:

“For a long time, the web has been about more. More links, more traffic, more hits, more choices. In the face of all that more, many sites (and most surfers) are not getting what they want. This free ebook, from bestselling author and Squidoo.com founder Seth Godin, proposes a different way of achieving your goals: less.”

The ebook outlines a technique that will increase PageRank, user satisfaction, clickthrough and the spread of your ideas, whatever those ideas are. It doesn’t matter if you use Squidoo or not… the idea of a lens makes sense whether you post it yourself or let us host it for you. And hey, it’s free.

Enjoy the blog. There are some pretty smart people itching to share their ideas with you.