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Can Hype Be Over-Rated?
I, for one, am averse to the cult of personality that makes celebrity endorsements such a huge business. (I'm not a Doctor, but I play one on TV). So why would I care what advertising executive Seth Godin has to say?
Well, Squidoo has certainly made an impact on the web. Two parts social networking site and one part blogspace provider, it differs from most other social networking sites in that it encourages affiliate links. It's pretty much zero parts Wikipedia, a site that Squidoo loves to compare itself to.
Herewith is a brief introduction to "Original Squid" Seth Godin, beginning with the video clip: "All Marketers are Liars" Seth Godin Speaks at Google
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Utilities That Make Social Bookmarking Easy
Table of Contents
Seth Godin Addresses Google
Here is a sample of Seth's address to Google shortly after Page and Brinn sold the company. You Tube limits the length of uploads, which prevents showing the full video.
"Everyone's an Expert" -- Free e-Book!
http://www.squidoo.com/pages/EveryoneIsAnExpert.pdf
You might want to read Everyone Is an Expert a free e-book (That's what marketers call pdf files) explaining the concept behind Squidoo, and why you might want to join.
Some of this information is repeated elsewhere, but this is probably the best overview, and includes content found nowhere else.
Seth's Latest Book: Tribes
The reaction to Godin's Squidoo project on the worldwide web (yes, lensmasters, there is a world outside Squidoo.) has generally been, "I don't get it," or "What does it do?"
I've wondered that myself, but I think this book sheds a little light on the subject. Squidoo is Seth's tribe. I don't know what he's going to do with it. I'm not sure he knows what he's going to do with it. At least the desire to build a group identity explains the superfluous use of "in" terms like lens for webpage, lensmaster for user, lensography for table of contents, etc.
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 12/27/2009)
This description summarizes the gist of the book better than I can (having never read it). Whether I say it's the greatest book in the history of the English language or it blows chunks doesn't matter. You will believe what you're predisposed to believe and form an opinion of my credibility based on whether or not I agree with you.
Permission Marketing
This book probably outlines the concept behind Squidoo better than any other. People don't trust advertisers. They trust their friends. If you could form a social network of trustworthy experts to recommend products, well then you would have something.
If people actually used Squidoo to model a neural network that way, it really would be something -- but the most successful "lensmasters" are those who join every fanclub they can find, thus increasing their internal links, their page significance, their traffic, their "lensrank," and ultimately their revenue. I never pay much attention to "recommendations" from anyone working on commission. It's my money, my responsibility to research, and my decision.
Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers
Amazon Price: $19.00 (as of 12/27/2009)
Unleashing the Ideavirus
I get the impression that Godin is much more comfortable with "push" media than with the internet. He often uses the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in a very negative sense -- much as "hacker" has become generally understood to involve unauthorized network intrusion -- all the while ignoring the fact that Squidoo uses SEO techniques to promote content that is often questionable to say the least.
Here he outlines a strategy for "turning a funnel into a megaphone," that sounds a lot like search-engine spam to me. It's not mentioned in Squidoo's Zero Tolerance Spam Policy a document that seems to be more honored in it's breach than it's observance.
Unleashing the Ideavirus
Amazon Price: $14.00 (as of 12/27/2009)
The Target Market
Outsiders inevitably ask of Squidoo: "What is the target market?" This is a fundamental question any advertiser should ask and one that is never really addressed. The short answer is the target market is Seth's tribe -- Squidoo users.
Well, duh! Obviously, a very large undisclosed portion of Squidoo's traffic is internally generated, and users -- lensmasters account for most of that. But who are they?
You really have to drill down to get a sense of this. For starters, Squidoo is promoted as a platform for people without a lot of internet publishing experience. Start there. Now to say that Squidoo's search function is rudimentary is probably overly generous. You have to drill down lensmaster by lensmaster by clicking on the icons in the "favorited" space or the lensmasters "fans."
Eventually you begin to see that there are a lot of work-at-home moms, get-rich-quick schemers, purveyors of questionable services, teens, MBA wannabes, and assorted ideologues in the mix as well as numerous other sub-groups. It's a very mixed bag.
This probably accounts for the "popularity" of utter pablum -- just about anything is liable to rock this overcrowded and unruly boat. Just like the Internet at large, really, but these guys can "rate" your content. ( I was just looking for 10,000 really inexperienced editors! )
More Books by Seth Godin
Don't get the idea that I'm entirely hostile toward Squidoo (please). It's just that anything can be improved -- but not by gushing about how it's already more perfectly perfect than anything has ever been. Squidoo's O.K. Seth Godin's O.K. Look. Here are some links to Seth's books. You can take 'em or leave 'em. I put the links here for your convenience. That's what I do.
Seth's Main Blog
http://www.sethgodin.com
Here is the digest version Of Seth's main blog http://www.sethgodin.com
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The Whole Ed Cata-Blog
Subscribe to The Whole Ed Cata-Blog
I've never quite been sure what distinguishes a blog from a regular webpage. Timeliness seems to have something to do with it, but that doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule.
Anyway, here are some of the things I've been working on lately...
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