Squidoo
 | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. (June 2009) |
 | |
| Company type | Search Engine |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet |
| Founded | 2005 |
| Headquarters | Hastings on Hudson, NY, USA |
Key people | Seth Godin, Founder. Megan Casey, Editor in Chief |
| Revenue | Unknown |
Number of employees | 6 |
| Website | www.squidoo.com |
Squidoo is a community website that allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest. Squidoo is in the top 500 most visited sites in the world, and in the top 300 most viewed in the United States.[1] Squidoo grew 91% in 2008, and had 900,000 handbuilt lenses as of February 1st, 2009.
History
Development on Squidoo started in 2005, launching a beta testing period in October of that year.[2] The launch team consisted of Seth Godin, his book editor Megan Casey, former Fast Company employee Heath Row, Corey Brown, and Gil Hildebrand, Jr.
The site came out of beta testing two months later and reached 100,000 lenses within the first six months. It now has more than 900,000 lenses and grew 91% in 2008.
Site structure
Squidoo is a user-generated website which uses the concept of a lens as its primary feature. In his ebook "Everyone's an Expert," Godin describes a lens as "[filtering] light and [showing] us what we need to see." Lenses are much like a blog posts, except on a single subject. The site allows content creators to earn revenue from referral links to sites like Amazon.com and Ebay. The users who create lenses, called "lensmasters," can be anyone with an interest in a specific subject; they do not necessarily have to be externally-recognized experts. In Squidoo's early stages, Godin noted that Martha Stewart and Jane Goodall's lenses did not receive large amounts of traffic, whereas lenses on MySpace and the online game line rider were among the site's most successful.[3] Squidoo contains lenses on 22 different topics, including Health & Medicine, Food & Cooking, and Business.
Squidoo is notable in that it allows users to create multimedia pages without learning html.[3] These pages often achieve built-in popularity due to their association with thousands of other Squidoo pages.
The site also employs a unique payment scheme: 5% of its revenue goes to charity, 50% goes to the lensmasters, and 45% goes to Squidoo. The lens and Squidoo rely on advertising and affiliate links to create revenue.[4] Nearly half of lensmasters donate their royalties to any of 65 featured charities, ranging from NPR and the American Heart Association to smaller organizations like Chimp Haven and Planet Gumbo. In October 2008, Squidoo donated $80,000 to charity.
Reception
Since its debut, Squidoo has been profiled in CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, and The Washington Post.[4][5][6] It has been criticized by Jason Calcanis for search engine optimization.[7] The site was given top prize in SXSW's community/wiki category.[8] Squidoo has challenged established information websites like About and eHow for traffic, while still remaining ahead of newer models like Mahalo and HubPages.[5][9]
Criticism
Squidoo has been known for spam issues due to the fact that its contributors are paid.[10] This led Google to penalize the website and remove it from high ranking positions.[11]
Competitors
- HubPages is a web publishing company with a similar business model
- Mahalo.com, a user generated search engine founded by Jason Calcanis
- Knol, a competitor run by Google
References
- ^ Squidoo.com traffic details Alexa.com.
- ^ The next free ebook (Squidoo!) Seth Godin's blog. October 7, 2005.
- ^ a b Interview of Seth Godin on Squidoo Stone Temple Consulting. June 20, 2007.
- ^ a b Squidoo.com Washington Post. January 8, 2006.
- ^ a b A Home Where Bloggers Can Plumb Those Obscure Passions The New York Times. April 10, 2006.
- ^ Tahmincioglu, Eve Beware of social networking overload MSNBC. July 21, 2008.
- ^ Is Squidoo becoming a massive, dirty SEO back alley? calcanis.com.
- ^ Squidoo Honored at 10th SXSW Interactive Web Awards on Vigit Labs. March 14, 2007
- ^ Unique Visitors between Squidoo, Mahalo, and HubPages compete.com.
- ^ http://gigaom.com/2007/07/08/squidoo-spam/
- ^ http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/10/google-acting-against-squidoo-due-to-spam/