Thursday, July 27, 2006

squidoo whydontcha

I first noticed squidoo several months ago. I think Steven posted about it. Sometime later I wandered over and took a look at Michael and Jenny's Library 2.0 Reading List and I thought This is cool and then something along the lines of This is really gonna take off. Then, I forgot about it.

Meanwhile...someone (can't trackback to whom - apologies!) directed me to Seth Godin's Flipping the Funnel. I printed it out (I know, so zero.zero) and it sat on my desk at home for awhile. Until today. I read it (practically the whole thing) on the way to work this morning (while at stoplights). Essentially, Seth (who's behind Squidoo) has this idea that if you (as a business, politician, non-profit, what have you) 1) identify your biggest fans and 2) teach them about social networking and 3) get out of the way - you're golden. (Unless you are not cool and then you'll get roasted and that's the way things work ... better luck next time. That is, you have to have something worth talking about in the first place.) He talks specifically about del.icio.us, flickr, blogging, and ... squidoo (of course he did, what's he gonna do?). I went back to squidoo today and illustrated, yet again, how truly useful it can be.

Cool ideas from Seth in the funnel piece aside (and I do plan to pull them into what I think will be my next chapter for the LBC project) what about squidoo itself? I wonder why us library-related bloggers, especially those that are all into the Web 2.0 stuff, have not gotten more into it. It seems like a super easy way to pull a personalized view of whatever that's far more dynamic than flickr, del., and our blogs can do (even when we're manually mashing). I admit that I thought it was cool but never went back. Or is there something else you're playing with that you like better?

(And - did everybody already talk about this and I missed it? - If yes, please point me there.)

4 comments:

David said...

I don't think you missed it as it hasn't gotten that much run.

One of the simmering issues on the bleeding edge of social networking could be added as a forth step to Seth's idea.

4) Be prepared for your most loyal fans to ask for a cut of that Google adsense money when the traffic goes up.

As Dare from Microsoft pointed out, there is a revenue sharing movement starting to eek out where power users, contributors what have you want in on coin since it's there data that powers the sites success.

Needless to say this has not sat well with folks from sites like Flickr and serves as the first hinge moment where the idea of corporate control of a copyright clashes with the idea of community created content for the community's sake.

The question is, which side of the battle does the library hedge its bet?

chrystie said...

coin v. community:

community, hands down. and perhaps that's because we don't have much coin to work with in the first place.

David said...

Yet the trouble is that betting community puts the library at odds with publishers who's DRM protected content and copyrights the library is charged to respect.

If you had said coin, the there is the community backlash. A classic case of the libraries being placed into the "horns of a dilemma" as millitary planners love to call things like this.

chrystie said...

i don't see why we can't champion all copyrighted content, traditionally published, and self-published, as well as non-copyrighted discursive content. surely there is commercial tension there, but it doesn't mean we can't provide access to all.