Squidblog

When blogs first started to boom, the “cat blog” emerged.

The cat blog is what happens when your service moves from specialized early adopters to mainstream users. The cat blog means you’ve done something right!

Only, here’s what happened with cat blogs from 2000-2006. Hundreds of thousands of them appeared. Personal journals about a cat, a dog, Barbara’s Cosmic Wonderings, your next door neighbor’s daily life. People played with the powerful and seductive (and kind of scary) notion of publishing their thoughts to the world. But more often than not they didn’t have a hook. Or an idea. Or the time. Or readers. So they stopped. And all those abandoned cat blogs just hung around and got in the way, or disappeared and were never heard from again.

But the cat blog is back! And better, and easier, and far more powerful than before. Why? Because it’s not a blog. It’s not something you have to post to every day. It’s not just a text journal.

It’s a lens. It’s a guidepost to the best things online about your pet and her favorite food and funny tricks and where you adopted her and how you get the dog to stop barking and why Scottish Fold cats don’t seem to have ears. It’s a single page of real world opinions from people about their pets.

Best of all, if you start one on a pet, you’re not stuck just talking about him all the time. You can make 10 more lenses. On different topics. For free. And stop back in a month or two and see how they’re doing. The real kicker: you earn royalties for charity along the way.

So, stop by the ASPCA Headquarters on Squidoo.

See what the new new cat (or dog or ferret or hamster) blog looks like.

Calling all charitable-minded Squids! This is your opportunity to become a key volunteer member of our philanthropy team as an official Squidoo-Gooder.

Every day we’re surprised and delighted by your smart, big-hearted ideas, lenses, and groups. So delighted, in fact, that we want to hire a few of you to spearhead Squidoo’s grassroots philanthropy initiatives.

It’s unpaid (sorry!), but we will donate $100 per month to the nonprofit of your choice, and we’ll make you up your own Squidoo-Gooder badge. Plus, we think that the reward of doing good for the world is nothing to sniff at, either.

Here’s what the volunteer position will entail:

- Get the word out about Squidoo’s free fundraising and awareness-raising platform on message boards, blogs, and forums
- Choose a cause you’re passionate about, and keep us up-to-date on current goings-on
- Build lenses and groups with a nonprofit or philanthropic spin
- Come up with great ideas to help us spread our nonprofit story and increase the number of lenses donating their royalties to charity

Here’s what we’ll ask of you:

- Give 3-5 hours a week
- Be articulate, reliable, creative, and dedicated
- Be ready to raise money, improve lives, and do good by January 11!

Are you up for the challenge? Send me an email by Friday, January 5, explaining what you’d bring to the task, plus two ideas on how you’d get new audiences to submit lenses to benefit charity. jill@squidoo.com

We’ll make a final decision on the team by Wednesday, January 10, and Squidoo-Gooders will have their first assignment by Thursday, January 11.

Feel free to email me with any questions. And thanks again for everything you’ve done so far to support Squidoo’s charitable efforts.