CALAMARI DREAMING: How I got Swaddled in Squidoo's Sexy Tentacles

This eight-armed hip-hop squid was made by Marilyn Patrizio http://mpatrizio.com/

This is a love poem dedicated to the Web 2.0. wunderkind Squidoo.com, the brainchild of Seth "IdeaVirus" Godin. The website has taken a lot of flack recently due to problems with SEO spammers and subsequently took a dive in search traffic after Google made changes to it's algorithm. I'm an avid user and it's sad that the site's rep is getting blemished unfairly (more on that below). Check out the site if you haven't--it can be pretty addictive. And just like Newsvine, Squidoo shares revenue with its users. My last monthly payment from July was $52.96 and in June I earned $31.79. Not too shabby. For a list of my Squidoo pages, click hereNow onto my poem. Each stanza is a separate song parody. See if you can guess them all.

GETTING SQUIDDY WITH IT

Now that it's detractors are more than ever
Know that we still have each other
You can swim under my Goodfella
You can swim under my Goodfella
Ella ella eh eh eh, yay yay, ella, ella

Every night in my dream
I see Squidoo, I feel her
Cue a pan-flute solo, because I've got it bad

If you wanna be my lens lover, you gotta get with all my squids,
Tell me how much you like'em, recommend them to your friends If you wanna be my lens lover, zig-a-zag boom boom boom
Making lenses is too easy, but that's the way it is.

Hey there Squi-doo-ee, I know times are getting rough
But just believe me cephalopoda, Someday your gills will be buff
Oh you get your ink on me
Oh you get your ink on me
Oh you get your ink on me
Oh you get your ink on me
Ink on me

MORE ON WHAT'S GOING WITH SQUIDOO

According to a post in Techcrunch: "some Squidoo pages have seen a 75% drop in traffic, and in other cases have either been removed from high ranking positions on Google, or removed all together." Netscape responded by blocking seeds that link to Squidoo sites. Seth Godin stepped up to the plate and defended Squidoo in an interview on http://www.searchingdot.com/:

"Squidoo's promise from the start has been simple: we give anyone an easy-to-use platform where you can help people understand your little part of the world. A page where you can include links and content and pointers and a bit of community to help people figure out what's going on. That hasn't changed and won't change. Along the way, Google and other sites rewarded these pages with plenty of search engine traffic. No surprise. If we can help search engines find meaning for those that are searching, it's all good.

I'm afraid a few people got obsessed with the search traffic part of the deal. Squidoo is not some sort of magic search engine amplifier.

We still get a huge amount of search traffic, and my expectation is that it will increase, but if that was the only reason you were on Squidoo, if you were focused on a free ride without giving anything to the reader, then it wasn't a great match for anyone.

We love our lensmasters, the IM good guys especially. If you are building great pointers to great stuff and profiting by being an expert, by engaging people as they look for something to help them, we need you and will continue to work to help you."

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