Squidoo lenses

Squidoo is an interesting bookmarking and revenue sharing site. You create "lenses" which offer your view of a particular subject. You build these views with text, links to web pages or pointers to RSS feeds - and more. For example, I added a RSS feed lense for this site at http://www.squidoo.com/pcunix_unix/ and a lense of links at http://www.squidoo.com/pcunix_security/.

From a mechanical point of view, this is like Technorati or other tagging sites, but is (I think) a more clever implementation. The opportunity to earn revenue (which can also be donated in various ways) also sets this apart.

You also have some control over how much or how little advertising is presented with your lense. Google ads seem to appear by default, but you can add other sources such as Amazon and others.

In some ways, this is like using a blogging site, and you could even connect your varous lenses together into a coherent whole if you wanted to - that would be (or could be) a simple blog.

The interface could use a little work here and there. For example, "naming" a lense is actually providing a unique tag name, and the restrictions make me suspect that's being used as a file or directory name. The restrictions (alphanumeric, dashes and underscores) may cause confusion for people used to naming things "My Summer Vacation Pics!". Phrases like that go in the description field; why not just assign a unique identifier behind the scenes and eliminate this? Well, probably because the original idea was that there would be a name "Linux" that people could "claim". There are now hundreds of Linux related lenses, so that made no sense.

But that's minor carping. This looks like a nice little idea to me and it may find some favor among some segment of the web.

I created half a dozen lenses, choosing "Cash payout" for a couple and assigned the rest to the Squidoo traffic fund. I wouldn't think this would be a major source of income for anyone, but who knows? Maybe I'm too jaded and pessimistic. No doubt I'll forget all about this for years and suddenly find that they want to pay me a couple of bucks.. that's happened before.

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