Squidblog

The long and short of it is: YouTube decommissioned the old API we were using. That is why you might have noticed some empty, videoless YouTube modules right now.

We’re aware, and we’re working to upgrade to the new API. Smarter brains than mine (ie, Gil!) says the module will be back in action by the end of the week.

Thanks for sending in your bug reports and for your patience as we fix the module.

As we posted over the Summer and messaged to lensmasters individually, we’ve been making a handful of changes to our Squidoo policies, specifically in regards to X-rated content, overly promotional lenses, spam and junk.

Little by little over the last few months, we’ve implemented and released system filters to support our updated policies.

Tomorrow we’ll be scanning the whole site for X-rated lenses and will be locking them from view, after a lengthy heads-up period and several friendly advance notices.

We’re not excited about removing anyone’s lenses, but practically, supporting X rated lenses no longer makes good sense for us or for our community. X rated content is unfortunately more attractive to spammers than to participatory readers and good content creators.

Of course, lensmasters who think their lenses got flagged by accident will be able to request another review, but based on our last few scans and tests, we expect there be very few real false positives.

Just a heads up about planned maintenance:

Between 6:30pm and 8:30pm Eastern time tonight (Friday, 10/30/09) we’ll be disabling lens editing for some database maintenance. Lenses will be visible and reachable as usual, but lensmasters won’t be able to edit them or create new ones during that 2 hour window.

That is all!

With eBay’s recent announcement of their Quality Click Pricing plan come some good questions from lensmasters who love (and profit from) our eBay module, and a good dose of patience while we wait for some fixes from eBay.

The short of it is that eBay is changing the way they pay partners, even big and trusted ones like Squidoo. And as they implement some of their changes, other things break. That explains why you’re not seeing the daily eBay stats for your lenses right now, and we’re confident eBay will fix it for us very soon.

Once we know more from eBay about how their QCP plan will work for us, we’ll share it with you right away!

Last week we processed lensmaster payouts and included for the first time a partial month’s worth of additional payout from the InfoLinks text link ads, for those lenses that were opted in for it.

Unfortunately, in creating the new InfoLinks ad pool to share with opted-in lensmasters, we ran in to some complex bugs. As a result we wound up overpaying some lensmasters, whilst underpaying others who were owed a cut of the InfoLinks pie.

If you were one of the underpaid, we will make good on it in your favor in next month’s payout. (Which we’ll be processing earlier than usual, so you don’t have to wait).

If you were one of the overpaid, we aren’t asking you to send it back! We will just adjust your next month’s earnings.

We’re sorry again for the confusion this caused last week, and look forward to getting back on track with the trend of bigger and bigger payouts — especially as we race in to the holiday season, historically high for lensmaster royalties!

Thanks guys.

And as usual, the Squidteam is laboring away.

We’re fixing a few bugs that cropped up, including a star rating issue and LensRank not updating (it will in a few hours).

As always, if you’re finding something weird happening on your lens, please document it with as many details (even a screengrab) and send in a bug report. It may be a holiday weekend, but we’ve got an eye on the homestead and looking out for your reports.

Thanks!

P.S. And hey, if you’re looking for something fun to do today….

As you probably know, Twitter has been experiencing major site outages, which affects everyone who connects to or uses the service. This means you might not be able to add your Twitter account information to your social settings, or tweet notifications from newly published lenses.

The good news is you haven’t done anything wrong, your account is likely fine, and it isn’t broken! As soon as Twitter is back up and running, everything should work smoothly again.

You can keep track of Twitter’s updates on their blog: Status.Twitter.com

In the meantime, share the love by promoting another lensmaster’s lens.

On Squidoo, bugs always seem to show up when someone’s on vacation. Isn’t that how it always goes?

So if you’re having issues with:
- Twitter
- RSS feeds
- LensRank
…we’re taking a look.

Thanks for your patience!

In the meantime, read what lensmasters are getting excited about on the forum:

- Made a big sale at Amazon
- Bing in the traffic pie
- Getting a new laptop

We’re currently looking into some goofs that prevent modules from appearing properly on groups, and may prevent some groupmasters from editing. Thanks for your patience while we figure it out!

If you’re seeing a nasty bug, such as:

– favorites that won’t come up
– a lens getting stuck in the spam filter
– click out stats not showing
– missing guestbook buttons

…we’re on it!

And if your bug isn’t listed above, please file a bug report.

But the good news is we have found and fixed the front door bug, so now you can make all your favorite SquidWho and SquidLit and Ever.com lenses!

Thanks for your patience!