Squidblog

Just wanted to let you know that you can now pick a theme and add it to all your lenses at once. In one click.

Oh, and you don’t have to publish your lenses in order for the theme to work. Just select a theme for the lens and voila: it instantly shows up.

This is what you’ll see in your Workshop:

Here are 3 posts from the SquidU forum today that you should read. If you are a lensmaster who cares about the quality of her lenses, the goodness of the community, and the respect of your fellow lensmasters.

On junk.
On email etiquette.
On word scrambles. (Okay, this one is just for fun!)

Thanks.

A Monday smorgasbord of reminders about living in the day to day Squidworld. Of course, 99% of you won’t even need to read this. But for the sake of clarity, give it a scan. Thanks. You’re good eggs.

• If you ask for ratings swaps or participate in traffic exchanges, your account will probably get locked.
• If you make a junky page, chances are people won’t like it, will feel scammed by it, and will report it. Is “junk” subjective? Yes. Sometimes it has to do with empty modules or thin content. Sometimes it has to do with sales lenses that scream buy buy buy in flashing green lights. But it’s pretty easy to know when something isn’t junk, don’t you think?
• If you actively, aggressively, selfishly spam someone, you don’t stand much of a chance here (or anywhere) at all.
• If you create multiple accounts, making good lenses in one but spammy lenses in the other, remember that your reputation is only worth as much as your worst lenses.
• Anonymity only makes things harder for everyone. Wouldn’t you like to stockpile all your goodwill into one, real, identity, and capitalize on the respect you earn over time? It certainly earns you the benefit of the doubt when something goes wonky.
• Yes, we actually can tell if you’ve gone on a 1-star rating run, or if you’ve been boosting your own accounts with lots of 5 star ratings. And if we find it, we’ll remove the ratings, and perhaps lock your account.
• Take a second to read (or re-read) our public SquidDon’t policies. Some topics just aren’t kosher on Squidoo, because the majority of lenses that get created about them are spambait and typically up to no good. Pharmaceutical lenses, lots of weight loss lenses, gambling and credit card debt lenses, stuff like that (just for example). If writing about those topics is your entire gig, chances are good you’ll run up against a few sticking points on Squidoo. Sorry.
• Be careful what you buy online. Squidoo is free. All our official resources are free. If you’re buying an ebook, or buying a lens someone built, that transaction is entirely between you and that person.
• We love giving people the benefit of the doubt. Do you, too?
• Online is made up of real people. That’s all. Just worth remembering. Would you say something mean to someone’s face? Then maybe you don’t want to say it online, either.
• Create content you’re really proud of, stand for something, and probably, none of this matters.

Squidoo’s planning a little database maintenance tonight (actually, Wednesday morning).

Total downtime should only be about 15 minutes, and will happen anywhere between 12am to 4am EST.

Gil’s gonna be brew some coffee and stay up to keep an eye on things, so I’m sure the work will go as smoothly as ever.

Just wanted to give you guys a heads up!

Last week we released Twttrstrm, the very addicting Squidoo-Twitter power punch. Here are a few tips for keeping your Twttrstrms (and your followers) on their toes.

0. Start here.

1. Make a clear, compelling, specific statement or question.

2. Have a point of view.

3. Publish your Twttrstrm page (yes, it’s a Squidoo lens). Then tweet your question to kick off the conversation.

4. Don’t be shy about asking friends to retweet it for you.

5. Curate the discussion — reply to feedback. Don’t just reply; amplify.

6. Find another influential Twitterer on your topic and @reply them to see what they think of your twttrstrm.

7. Fill in the “liner notes” around your Twttrstrm page — flesh out the topic at hand with videos, links, pictures. That’s what the rest of the lens structure is for; background on the question.

8. Keep tweeting the Twttrstrm, and kindly retweet some of your followers’ best replies. Better yet, invite them to make their own Twttrstrms and reach their followers with it. Snowball a go go.

9. Know if your Twttstrm has a shelf life. Your “Best line in the Inaugural speech” Twttrstrm is probably over and done (but a fun time capsule for later). Whereas the “What’s for dinner tonight?” Twttrstrm could keep going for a year, if enough people enjoy swapping daily stories about steaks and taters!

10. Here’s a fun one: start a game that brings the power of Squidoo and Twitter together. A daily treasure hunt. A twitterhaiku contest. A “tweet your favorite charity lenses” drive. Get your followers engaged and spreading your tweets (and therein your Twttrstrm lens) and you not only get more traffic; you earn more influence.

11. Lucky number 11: Be interesting. Be useful. Imagine what body of feedback and answers would be helpful and content-rich and fascinating to have preserved in one place on your page.

BONUS: Don’t wait for someone else to run something interesting. You do it.

Looks like our servers drank a little too much eggnog over the holidays, because Squidoo is taking a short winter’s nap right now.

Yes, the site’s down. The good news is: Gil is on it.

Thanks for hanging in. And while you wait, maybe that Saturday M*A*S*H marathon is still on…

Here’s your fortune cookie reminder for the day:

If something sounds like a hustle, it probably is.

There’s plenty of good stuff out there, of course. But if you see an unofficial, offsite Squidoo tool or ebook or blog or automator (yikes) that feels like a hustle to you, you’re welcome to post it here. The community can help you decide what’s kosher or not. And probably, save you lots of time and money.

But now it’s back.

Thanks for your patience.

Heads up! We’re going to take the Squidservers down for two hours tonight, from 12am to 2am EST (4am - 6am GMT).

Just regular maintenance to further engooden the site. Join the SquidU forum thread for the latest updates.

Update: We’re back! Thanks for your patience.

Squidoo’s Lens of the Day is real popular. Wicked popular. So popular that it’s time for an upgrade.

We’re working this week with Google-owned Feedburner to be one of the first on their brand new email system. This means better reliability, scheduling options, a smoother subscribe and unsub process, and hey, you know you’re in good hands with Feedburner. The only downside is that we have to put Lens of the Day on hold for a few days while we get everything hooked up.

You don’t have to do a thing. If you’re already subscribed to LotD by RSS or email, you’ll get your new pings or emails automatically when we’re back up and running. In the meantime, just keep working on your lenses, and by all means, nominate your favorites to me at lotd at squidoo.com. (Giants, don’t forget the secret email address we gave you!)

For newcomers who aren’t sure what Lens of the Day is: It’s a competition, an opportunity, a candy gram, a daily dose of rocketfuel for Squidoo users and fans alike. It’s the best way to see how real people are using and benefitting from Squidoo.

Each week, with a little help from the community, I pick lenses that really stand out from the crowd. Lenses that are unique in content, topic, approach, layout, imagination… or lenses that just make me smile. I write ‘em up and stick them on the Lens of the Day blog. One a day. People subscribe to that blog via RSS and email (mostly by email) so that the Lens of the Day selections can deliver straight to their inboxes. After all, how else will you know if you got picked?