Squidoo: A Look at Lensmastering

With the whole Web 2.0 revolution and the creation of services like Wikipedia who allow anybody and everybody to claim expertise on a subject, where is the credibility factor going. Here's where Squidoo steps in. Squidoo is a site that allows a self-proclaimed expert create what they call a lens. A lens is simply a webpage that focuses on a specific topic. What's different from sites like Wikipedia is that other people can make their own lens for the same topic and there is no collaboration factor. When you create a lens you are allowed to pick from a bunch of modules to include in your site. If you want to display an rss feed on your lens that pertains to your topic, you can set up a module to do that. You can also set up modules on your lens to grab picture with certain tags from Flickr or map a location using Google Maps. In addition, if you should decide to try to earn a little cash from your lens, you can set up Amazon modules to sell products related to your topic. "This is all fine and dandy" you may say but "What about the credibility?" Here's where lens ranking steps and feedback in. Unlike Wikipedia, when visitors click links on your lens or report your lens, your lens ranking is effected. In addition, regularly updating your site to keep up your "lens freshness" can help your ranking. Overall the service is a great place to create a hobby or fan page and is fairly simple to use. It lacks the whole collaboration aspect but who wants to have someone edit their content anyway?

I gave Squidoo a whirl and created the following two lenses...
Ska on Squidoo
Less Than Jake on Squidoo