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Squidoo.com: Disruption Gone Wrong

kidmercury | 11 December, 2005 12:15

Squidoo is the new project of marketing guru Seth Godin. The basic idea -- or so it seems thus far -- is to allow people to write about what their experts in, and to earn money via advertising by doing so. It's pretty much a type of peer production strategy.

Being a huge fan of Seth Godin -- Unleashing the Ideavirus and Permission Marketing are brilliant works -- I signed up for the beta test, and wrote an entry on songwriting.

I hadn't updated it in a while, since, like many if not most people, I pretty much just wanted the link. And today, I got an email from Squidoo:

Hello, Beta User

As Lensmaster for the Squidoo Lens 'Use the Guitar to Pull Out Your Inner Songwriter', you are receiving this notification that your Lens will be deleted in 4 days unless you improve it.

Improved lenses are defined as lenses that have been published with two or more modules; unimproved lenses are deleted automatically after 7 days.

Sincerely,
The Squidoo Team

Hmm. Aside from addressing me as "Beta User," what's wrong with this?

Well, a few things, but mainly this:

Trying to bully people when using a peer production strategy does not seem to be the wisest idea. It's going to turn some people off. I understand Squidoo benefits from having quality, up to date content, and so are incentivized to create policies that do just that -- although they may wish to think about positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement, and may wish to choose to do the filtering work themselves; that could be where they add a lot of real value.

Of course, Seth is a lot more successful and experienced than I am, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe there's more to the story, and a larger rationale that I'm not seeing, but this doesn't seem to really embody the community spirit and user-centric philosophy that seems so essential to any peer production strategy.


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comments

Comment Icon that lousy email

Seth Godin | 11/12/2005, 18:16

We blew it. See my note at:
http://www.squidoo.com/blog/

Comment Icon how many days

phil jones | 12/12/2005, 09:53

Seth. Is it 4 days (as the email says) or 14 days, as you imply on your blog-post.

4 days is *very* short notice.

Comment Icon squidoo retraction email

kid mercury | 12/12/2005, 12:19

squidoo takes their words back -- here's the latest email i got from them:

**************************

Yesterday, you probably got an unsigned note from a member of the SquidTeam, threatening to delete your lenses. That was a mistake.

It was a mistake because it was poorly written, because it was unsigned by a real person and because we're not going to delete any of your lenses any time soon.

I apologize for this.

We're still in beta, and the text of that note was a scrap left over from a long time ago. And the note got sent, by mistake, to you and a few other folks.

Yes, we'd like you to add more modules. We're trying to avoid squatters and in the future, if you've got a dormant lens, we may ask you to work on it. But no, we are not commenting on the quality of your content. We're web guys, not critics.

Thanks for your patience.

Seth Godin
(and the rest of the team)

PS At least we didn't send you a fruitcake.

PPS If you're ever wondering about what's going on at
Squidoo, please don't hesitate to check out www.squidoo.com/blog.

 
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