Squidblog

Greetings Citizen Squids!

I can’t believe our beta started two years ago. In the 19 months we’ve been live and real and growing, an enormous amount has changed. We’ve learned a lot and built a site that is hard to recognize compared to where we started. And the key is we. There are now 125,000 squids, and we’ve built more than 300,000 pages.

And we add another thousand every single day.

Today we launched Squidflix, taking us even further down the long tail of useful user-generated content. This joins the roster of other ‘front doors’ that power the lensbuilding at Squidoo:
Squidwho, for content about people.
Squidbids, for your eBay auctions.
Squidvids, for your favorite YouTube topics.
The Ever project, for the stuff you’re truly passionate about.

Here are some facts you might be fascinated by (at the very least, they make useful Christmas party chatter):

Not only has the content grown, but our traffic has grown as well. We’re three to five times bigger than anyone else we compete with. Nobody else is even close in traffic, pages, users, etc. Google Analytics reports more than 6 million unique visitors a month and approximately twice that in visits.

And here’s a neat tidbit: We’re profitable. We haven’t raised any VC money, and now we shouldn’t ever have to. This means that we can continue to run the company for our lensmasters, for the people who surf by and for the charities we support, instead of focusing on meeting quarterly earnings targets.

Working together, we’ve raised well over $100,000 for charity. We’ve built a school in Southeast Asia and supported dozens of other charities as well.

Our best pages are very good. And our worst pages keep getting better (or don’t get indexed by us). The biggest lesson we’ve learned is that we can give people power, but the entire system needs boundaries. We’re working harder than ever to teach our lensmasters what makes a great page, and thanks to our volunteers, we’ve made Squidoo a really unhappy place for spammers.

It’s two years later, but our principles haven’t changed:
• Give people tools and responsibility and let them build the best stuff they can dream up.
• Make it easy for people to support causes they believe in.
• Enable search to work better by adding handbuilt insight to the mix.
• Figure out how to do all that at the same time we work with amazing people and manage to have fun while doing it.

We’re working on some even more amazing stuff that will be announced in the next three weeks.

Thanks to you and to all the people and organizations that have helped us. Here’s to the next two years… and beyond.

Amy won

Joseph did, too.

At eBay Live, we ran a fun little contest. (Gimmick, yes. Irrelevant, no).

We printed up 600 bright orange t-shirts, each with a handwritten letter posted on the front. The letter was from a seller talking to a friend about the free traffic she was getting from her eBay lenses on Squidoo.

So we gave the shirts away to people who were willing to set fashion sense aside for a day and wear Squid-tees on the show floor. Once on Thursday, once on Friday, I tapped just one orange-shirt-wearer on the shoulder. The person who got tapped won $9,000 worth of free SquidOffers advertising on our site… quality ad space to help promote their eBay store, their favorite auctions, their blog, their personal site, their favorite charities… whatever they want.

Amy won. Joseph did too. Both are eBay sellers looking to tell their stories and get found more online.

Thanks to everyone who wore the shirt. And remember, even if you didn’t get picked for the free advertising… that doesn’t mean you can’t make a free lens to promote your stores!

In early April, we launched the Kindness in Focus photo contest in partnership with our friends at VolunteerMatch. We asked you for photos that celebrated the spirit of giving, generosity, volunteering. You came, you submitted great pics (hundreds of them!), and then you voted on the best of the bunch.

By casting your vote, you told us which two nonprofits deserved to win the $1,000 grand prizes. And today we’re here to tell you that, well, you picked two pretty darn amazing causes. So without further ado, the big winners are:

Perfect Health, submitted by Aimee Carter to benefit the Blue Ridge Chapter of the National MS Society; and
Proof of Life, submitted by Jennifer Rose to benefit the International Humanities Center/Live St. Bernard.

So kudos to everyone who participated!

A note from a lensmaster just made my day, and I thought I’d share:

“The reasons I love Squidoo are captured in the poll on my lens - but these are only some of the reasons.

I have two lenses that are coming up on the first page of Google for their core keywords.

I love the sense of community, the creative inspiration and the collaborative marketing that occurs with Squidoo.

My lenses have generated so much interaction with other people - something that has been missing in my previous marketing efforts.

I have another ten lenses in the making and hundreds of ideas for what to do with them.

Thanks for this great opportunity.”

Ron Passfield, PhD
Brisbane Australia

P.S. Vote in his poll to show off why YOU love Squidoo!

Yup, Squidoo’s growing. Fast.

Which means I get to make sure the site and servers eat their veggies and stay strong.

I’ll be running a few major server upgrades tomorrow morning (Saturday, 4/27/07) between the hours of 7 am and 11 am EST. During this time Squidoo and SquidU may be down. So, go have a cup of coffee, and come back soon!

Here’s a neat writeup on 5 ways hotels can increase their presence online. Flickr, MySpace, Squidoo… nobrainers for telling your story. Carolyn suggests getting your concierge, bartenders and wedding planners in on the fun. How many staffers can you turn into celebrities? Why don’t they have lenses? You know: personality goes a long way.

It works for Birders too. Type “adirondack birding” into Google. This lens is the #2 result. And it’s in hot pursuit of #1.

We’ve been working with the International Rescue Committee and their Stop Violence Against Women outreach. And today they invited tens of thousands of their supporters to lend their voices to lenses.

The IRC gets it. Does your organization?

“This issue, we’re featuring a site called Squidoo. Squidoo is quick, fun, and totally free. In fact, we think it’s the best 10 minutes you’ll spend this week.

What’s great about Squidoo is that when you build your lens, you’ll be helping IRC in two important ways. First, you’ll be driving traffic to the IRC Web site. Second, each lens you build has the ability to generate money to support the IRC mission. The more lenses you build, the more traffic you’ll generate. The more traffic you generate, the more money you’ll raise!”

There’s been a lot of talk about stumbling lately.

First there’s the rumor about eBay (or Google or AOL) buying StumbleUpon.

Then there’s this excellent overview from one passionate Stumbler about how he uses the tool and what he gets out of it.

What’s the big deal? Why, discovery, of course. Surprise. Exploration.

Relevance, yes. But without expectation. Similarity, but with a twist of the unanticipated.

Interestingly, Squidoo last week introduced an experimental new feature that pays homage to these same ideas. It’s an “I’m feeling lucky/ Stumble Upon/ Hit me again” feature that we’re referring to as Go Fish.

You can see it in the image below, or on Lori’s cool lens about Punk Hairdos. It’s the big blue arrow. When you click it, you see another highly ranked lens in the same category. And then another. And another.

In just one clickstream I went from Punk Hair, to Trailer Park Boys, to The Online Paper Airplane Museum to Celebrity Tattoos.

(Hey, where did my last 10 minutes go!)

The Stumbling principle says wonderful things about our culture of curiosity. Look around. Discover. Share your journey with a friend. And so the web goes.

If your lens is in this network, you could benefit from the proximity effect. And if your lens is also in the StumbleUpon network, multiple that x2. If your lens is tagged on delicious, multiply again.

It’s not so hard to get found. Sometimes you just have to drop some breadcrumbs along the way.

Okay, so you know that a photo is worth 1,000 words. But $1,000?

Yup. Earlier this week, we announced a photo contest in conjunction with VolunteerMatch called Kindness in Focus.

Here’s how it works:

1) You send in great photos that capture moments of everyday kindness
2) The community votes on their favorites
3) The two people who submitted the best pictures win $1,000 each, to donate to the nonprofit of their choice.

For all the details on how to enter, check out www.kindnessinfocus.com

But hurry - you’ve only got a few weeks left!

Hey, Kathryn says we’re all the rage.

Authors, she’s got some good tips for you over there.

“To be seen on the Internet, and to promote your books, CDs, and other products, you have make friends online, and become involved in a network of like-minded people… The concept of the online social network is all the Internet rage. Where blogs allow website owners to add content and promote various products and ideas, involvement in a social networks help one target a specific audience and broaden exposure in a relevant environment.”