Introducing Plexo

We've made a major change to Squidoo. Now, each and every lens can include the all-powerful, all-knowing, omniscient Plexo feature.

Plexo is like Digg or Reddit, but with the long tail added in for good measure.

Here's a Q&A:

Q: What's Plexo?
A: Plexo is social bookmarking meets Digg meets the long tail. It allows anyone to host their rank list--to become editor in chief of one small slice of the best of world we live in. The best live jazz albums, the best blog posts about design, the stupidest members of Congress. Plexo lets you easily do what a blog can't... it lets you engage your audience and have them vote, every day if you like, on the most important issues to you.

Q: I've never been to Squidoo before? Why should I make a Plex lens?
A: Why should magazines and reddit.com have all the fun? Find a topic and become the center of it. Plexo lists become the watercooler on any topic, for anyone.

Q: I'm one of your top lensmasters: why should I put Plexo on my existing lenses?
A: Squidoo was designed to make it easy for people to come... and to leave. To provide a filter of meaning. Plexo gives people a reason to come back to your lens. It's the easiest way we can think of to create return traffic.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Plexo?
A: Watching the scuffles at the bottom of the Digg pyramid, it became clear that there just isn't enough room on the front page of Digg for all the stuff worth seeing. So what if there were 100 or 1,000 or 100,000 front pages?

Q: Isn't Plexo just Digg for the long tail?
A: And isn't Superman just a good samaritan? Donovan just a folk singer? The Wizard of Oz just a movie?

Q: Do you think Plexo will change the spirit of recommendation that Squidoo was founded on?
A: Every Plexo still has a human editor, a front door to keep out the spam and to keep the voting on topic. That human component, the responsible party--that's what just might be missing from existing voting sites.