Yesterday, Squidoo achieved a pretty cool milestone:
We vaulted over the 20,000 lens mark.
We’d planned to surpass 20,000 lenses by the end of 2006. Like, this year.
So, thanks to our fantastic lensmasters, we’re now nine months ahead of schedule.
Keep up the good work!
Last week, our friends over at BzzAgent invited a whole bunch of their members to build lenses. Lenses about their favorite things (animal, vegetable, or mineral). About their jobs, hobbies, friends, ideas.
What we’ve seen has knocked our socks off.
This is a group of bright, enthusiastic people taking recommendation online, quickly, by making lenses.
Just a few great BzzAgent examples:
We thank you, BzzAgents. (And Dave and Jon!) Keep up the great work.
I confess. We have a lot of Squid stuff hanging around the office. Fishing lure that’s decidedly squiddy, squid puppets, hats, buttons, stickers, paintings.
One of our favorite products is the Squid powerstrip, written up by Kevin Kelly a few days ago on his Cool Tools site. PowerSquid aside, Cool Tools is a wonderful place for recommended gadgets, books, sites, hardware, software and more. We’re fans. (Along with countless others on the web).
So it was only a matter of time before we introduced the Cool Tools module. It sports an RSS feed of the coolest stuff the site has to offer.
Another popular site we dig is Digg, where you decide the news. Like Squidoo, Digg touches on the idea that we are all craving online recommendations (in Digg’s case, news items). So a Digg headlines module was a natural fit.
Give ‘em a try. Let us know what you think!
(Both modules are featured as “New” in the Module Picker).
You are hereby invited to participate in the first ever Squidoo-Boing Boing challenge.
We’re huge fans of all things Boing Boing.
If you are, too, help us identify the best of Boing Boing — and celebrate the “directory of wonderful things.” Learn how you can participate, here.
Winners will receive presents.
We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
…to bring you an important news bulletin.
Back by popular demand: The Technorati module. (New and improved!)
Find out what people are blogging about, right now.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.
A friend in Minneapolis just IM’d me the following link: Cerado’s Web 2.0 or Star Wars Quiz. Basically, it’s a list of company and character names, and you earn points identifying which is which.
Not to inflate anyone’s score, but we’re thrilled to be included in the list. Heck, we’d be honored to have a Star Wars character named Squidoo, too. Maybe George Lucas could CGI us into the next re-release?
The Squidoo Firefox extension. It’s back. And now it’s official.
Firefox approved us in record time, so now you can get your nifty Squidoo add-on straight from Mozilla.
If you’re interested in faster lensbuilding and browser shortcuts to your lenses, this one’s for you.
A new module worth a look.
Not yet announced to the public at large is our hot-off-the-press module with CafePress. It uses CP’s new, powerful TopicAds program so you can feature the latest and greatest CP designs right on your lens — to raise money for charity, or for you.
The module has only been live for a few hours, and already we have tons of lenses using it well. A few examples:
Thanks to everyone on both teams that made it work.
Have fun.
Q: A friend asked me what the difference is between Squidoo and MySpace.
A: Do a Google search for “reymysterio” (a WWF toughguy).
The 2nd result is Squidoo’s lens on the wrestler: www.squidoo.com/reymysterio
The 4th result is MySpace’s version: www.myspace.com/reymysterio
Look at both.
Get it?
We’ve noticed that lensmasters have started to build lenses to help other lensmaster build better lenses. There’s already a lot of impressive idea and experience sharing in SquidU, but we’re excited to see the group learning spill over into Squidoo proper!
One lensmaster, Susan McHugh, has offered to proofread other lensmasters’s lenses — and recommends a wide range of useful reference books that can help lensmasters learn how to write better. We don’t know whether anyone has taken Susan up on her proofreading offer yet, but we think this shows a lot of initiative — and potential.
Meanwhile, several other lensmasters have built lenses sharing some of what they’ve learned about building better lenses. Hashim Warren’s lens How To Build a Squidoo Lens That Moves People to Action makes several suggestions about making lenses that can help mobilize readers — and better involve readers in the lens itself. Ty West shares some of his ideas on How to Squidoo. Mary Kindred holds up some pointers on leveraging Up for Grabs lenses, tagging and incorporating images in 23 Squidoo!
And lensmaster Alex Krupp has even developed a Squidoo chat channel, as well as a lens on how to Join the Squidoo Chatroom! We held an informal inaugural chat yesterday afternoon — attracting a lensmaster who lives in Russia.
What have you learned about Squidoo? Join the discussion in SquidU — or build a lens sharing your best and brightest ideas!
Squidoo is the popular publishing platform and community that makes it easy for you to create "lenses" online. Lenses are pages, kind of like flyers or signposts or overview articles, that gather everything you know about your topic of interest – and snap it all into focus. It's a supersimple, fun and powerful way to share your interests, build your online identity and credibility, and connect with new readers and friends. It's all free, and you could even earn a royalty for charity or yourself!
Get Started!