Is Squidoo irrelevant in the age of weblogs or blogs? In the internet, content can be static or dynamic, structured or unstructured. In the early days, many websites offer static information. Then, websites were merely static pages with links to one another. Today, there are many websites which still offer static and evergreen content. However, things are now a bit more sophisticated. Wikipedia is an excellent example of a site which is updated and refined by ordinary folks. But Wikipedia content is something that is fairly stable and can be linked to reliably. In other words, its content is quite static, with some degree of refinements.
Blogs, on the other hand, are the very essence of refreshed content. People go back to blogs every day to see what’s new. Good blogs generate stickiness and repeat customers. Essentially, a blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order.
The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”.
Squidoo however is something that lie somewhere between Wikipedia and blogs. The basic premise of Squidoo is that anyone can create a Squidoo-hosted weblog (called a “lens”) about any topic that matters to him or her. You can create as many lenses as you want, on as many topics as you want, and other people can build lenses on the same topic you’ve chosen. The goal of Squidoo is to create a collective grouping of information with the aim of providing users multiple points of view on both broad and niche topics. Its a platform that makes it easy for anyone, even a newbie, to teach people about topics they care about. The assumption is that everyone is an expert about something, and the Squidoo.com platform is designed to make it easy to do that. See Squidoo lens on Squidoo-101.
The Squidoo idea was thus simple and easy to explain: allow anyone to build a single page, called a lens, on a topic that he or she is passionate about. The person building the lens, the “lensmaster”, gets recognition as an expert in his or her area of expertise, and cash. Squidoo shares a percentage of profits with its authors.
I see Squidoo lenses as complimentary to blogs in this information age. A Squidoo lens is supposed to present information on a subject in a more structured manner whereas a blog is more chronological in nature. Information or knowledge is best presented in logical blocks. Likewise, a Squidoo lens captures the subject matter in chunks called modules. A module can be several paragraphs of information, or it can also reference other material in the form of links. The link list, RSS and Technorati modules are such examples of modules which are meant to refer to other materials in the internet.
The lensmaster can thus craft his lens as a master craftsman does by presenting his subject matter as a series of knowledge chunks called modules, some of which contain essays and others which reference other materials. A master craftsman would be able to beautifully weave all his modules as a tapestry. If used in this manner, a Squidoo lens becomes a very valuable piece of knowledge, left behind indefinitely for all to behold.
On the other hand, if a lens is merely a set of links, then it becomes just a directory. Are directories bad? Not really, they are useful in our everyday lives. But they are not really pieces of art are they? Nor are they thesis in nature. But they are useful. Thus, Squidoo lenses have their place in blogosphere as individual nuggets of information containing concise and yet precise knowledge on certain subjects; organized and structured for easy learning.
Blogs on the other hand are like living diaries. They chronicle the lives of the blogger as seen from the perspective of a certain subject. They are not really structured or organized, though some blogs can be. But in general, blogs are just that, web logs. So are blogs less superior than Squidoo lenses, or vice versa? I think neither. They each have their own place in our lives. We track blogs via RSS readers because we are addicted to information or news as and when they develop. But if we need to learn or know more about some particular subject, a Squidoo lens becomes the lamp unto our path.
An avid blogger would thus be able to make use of a set of Squidoo lenses as his or her knowledge building blocks. These can then reference the set of blogs that he or she maintains. Those blogs can also reference the set of Squidoo lenses where appropriate. An ecosystem of lenses, blogs, emails, and links (ala del.icio.us) is thus created in which a “Web2.0 person” shares his or her knowledge to the whole blogosphere Can this be how knowledge is created, shared and presented in this new millennium? Perhaps. Who knows what else will be innovated; findory? MySpace? 9rules?
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