Gracious Seth Godin Shows Up Knol

In a social web, social skills are very much required. While Jason C at Manalo leaves a lot to be desired in that respect, Seth Godin has given us his usual and gracious response and created an insomnia page that is simply much better than Google's.

There is one other factor overlooked by Squidoo's competitors, and that is: FUN!

Squidoo is fun. It is fun to build pages, fun to be in that community, fun to read pages, fun to parody Squidoo, fun to build your little empire. It is a fun place to learn internet skills and to social network. Its a fun place to share, to help, to promote, to make friends. Its a real community. Its a fun place to care about and rewarding.

That kind of fun is spirit, something natural that can't be duplicated no matter what size of a corporation likes your ideas. Corey, Megan and Gil are fun to be around, keep Squidoo fresh and exciting, and they care very deeply about the members of their 'community' and the experience they have with it.

While Google's announcement is enough to give lots of people insomnia, in my humble opinion Squidoo has a certain panache that can't be copied- buried, maybe, but Squidoo has made the internet fun in a way that it hasn't been in a very long time.

Danger, Will Robinson! Google is Taking on Squidoo AND Wikipedia!

Perhaps you have heard, and perhaps not, but the big news is that Google is taking on Wikipedia and Squidoo with a new project they call Knol. Like Squidoo, it offers writers free pages and a share of ad revenue. It also is a social page, with rankings and votes by visitors, permits suggested edits by visitors like Wikipedia.

It isn't open to everyone as yet.

There is a lot that is unclear about this project like whether they will add revenue sharing modules as Squidoo has or not, for example. We don't know how those pages will rank next to the Google version. Google pay has rapidly overtaken Paypal, and there was the unfortunate coincidence of Squidoo going to the Ebay convention almost immediately after Ebay and Google had their big falling out. Who knows if the Google slap which lasted for months had anything to do with that? If Google overtakes the revenue modules that Squidoo offers, it is possible that the only remaining distinguishing module will be Ebay.

As to Wikipedia, since their information is public domain, and contributors/editors get nothing for their trouble, many of them may migrate to Google Knol pages to at least earn something for their contribution. Since all the information on Wikipedia is public domain (copyleft), even all the content they already have could be pillaged to make, not only Squidoo pages, but also Google Knol pages.

I was one of the folks that made a 'Google Page' prototype months ago and frankly, it wasn't much. It wasn't even close to the sophistication of Squidoo at the time. I don't recall any traffic of any kind to or from it. Google will have to do much better to overtake Squidoo quality- wise. The prototypes they're showing are really nice though.

Seth, Gil, Corey and Megan are quite bright. If anyone can 'pull a rabbit out of a hat', its them. We'll have watch and see what the big shooters do. For an admittedly far more expert take on this, visit a friend here.

I'm Back!

Hello friends, I'm back. Past the worst of the worst...

Janusz has kindly made a beautiful new header for the Mall on Squidoo for the Christmas season, and I hope that you will all take a look and compliment him on his wonderful work!

There are many things to get up-to-date with: SquidWho, SquidVids, SquidFlicks... too much to write about all at once.