Here is the basic info:

SquidWho is the first people-built who’s who. It’s an easy way to find out what’s what (and where) about famous (and not so famous) people around the world. If you’re a fan of someone, build a page about them. Point to their books, their blog, their wikipedia entry and their videos. Share your opinions but most of all, make it easy for people to discover the really good stuff.

Unlike traditional Who’s Who directories, SquidWho is open. Everyone gets a chance to share her opinion without worrying about what some committee of anonymous people have to say. So, if you like Norah Jones, built a page about her. Hate Mick Jagger? Go for it. It’s up to you.

So, what is it really?

Just another way to repackage content already online including:

• online poll
• at a glance (aka Wikipedia article)
• flickr photos
• Amazon products
• YouTube videos
• ebay items
• fan clubs

Of course it includes Google ads, lensmaster information and your basic list of services (RSS, email, print, del.icio.us, digg, stumbleupon and stats).

Here’s what Squidoo says:

Squidoo is also about being at your best, so when you do a search for your favorite rock star or cousin, you’ll automatically go to the best lens. Not seeing YOUR lens as the top lens? Add some more modules, dig up some great trivia, and beef up the links, and tell a friend. Find a fan forum on your person and see if folks there want to help. You might just make it to the top and become famous in your own right!

What’s so great?
Nothing much.

Yes, you have the ability to build a personalized page, but for what? Online reputation management is something that we should all consider when building your reputation or building a social presence online, but is this what we have come to?

What do you think?

Comments

As a brief aside, he had a note about declaring his emancipation proclamation for owning his own name online, so I thought I’d give a few tidbits, based on some of the stuff I’ve done. I had that same AHA! moment several years ago, when I noticed my resume online ranking for my name, and decided it was time to take a more proactive approach. Google results are your new resume whether you’re going on a date, getting a job, or representing your company. Reputation management is the new personal branding. Here’s some tips on emancipating your reputation. It’s not EASY – but it’s better than having a video of someone singing bad karoake ranking for your name.

1. Register your name on Naymz, Linkedin, Myspace, Facebook, Squidoo, Digg and other social media sites.
I repeat this often for good reason. These are great places to start for low competition names. If your name is more common, you will need to get a bit more creative with how you use these.

2. Have a friend interview you.
Do a reciprocal interview, or triangle link exchange interview if necessary.

3. Volunteer to write an article on something you’re good at.
Most sites would love to have some unique content (myself included). Ask them to give you a bio, and link to some of the sites in #1, or embed links yourself.

4. Own your .com, .net, and .org.
At minimum you should own one of these. Is your name Joe Smith? Tack something on the end. JoeSmithblog.com or Joe-smith.net. Don’t be afraid to get a little creative if you have to, just make sure your name is in the domain. Write a couple pages about yourself, put up some pictures.

5. Start a new site or 3 and put your name in the title tag.
Repeat above with alter egos or domain names you thought were cool and registered during a weak moment. Put them to use. Hosting is cheap. Be sure to put your name in the title, url, and any other place you can cram it.

6. Do a couple videos or make a podcast
You can do it with a freakin’ digital camera if you’re really lazy. With universal search, they show up right in the serps. Most industries have some podcasts now – the hosts are always looking for guests, be proactive and pitch a show idea to them.

7. Put a picture up, and make sure to use proper alt text and a caption
Bam! You’re optimized for image search. To be safe, hotlink to it from a couple different places

8. Sign up on a couple forums – Use your REAL name!
Why use an alter ego if you’re going to be a responsible community member anyhow? (you can always sign up with an alter ego for flaming and trolling)
There’s actually an interesting discussion of the topic of using your own name on message boards in the WMW supporter’s forum.

9. Do a press release about how you did something.
You just built a website! You just joined facebook! You just sneezed! Yeah! Yea it’s shameless. You’re optimizing for your name here you remember.

10. Speak at an industry event, local event, or at the local library
You’ll likely get a bio page and a link – and links rule.

Important notes:

• Quit being paranoid – I’m looking in your general direction tin foil hatters – I was that way too – accept it – people will google you, and you might as well be proactive
• Look for places you can publish where your name ends up in the title tag.
• The search results for your name is likely not that competitive unless you have a very common name.
• Use your name in urls, titles, headings, etc, whenever possible. Have a look at important keyword use factors.
• If you have a common name, focus on optimizing a single page versus owning EVERY page in the search result. Use the same techniques, but be sure to link them all back to your targeted high power hub page.
• Another technique with a common name would be to associate a location like Albany, NY or Frankenmuth, MI with your name.

More resources:

• Andy Beal’s reputation management guide
• Lee Odden on reputation management
• B. Pro’s guide to reputation management
• One step further – keywords you should own (wmw supporter’s forum)

What else have you done to "own your reputation" online more proactively?

Comments

Google Squishing Squidoo Over Spam

Marketing expert Seth Godin created Squidoo as a site where anyone could easily create a ‘lens’, which would be a user-created page that takes a deeper look into someone’s favorite subject.

As with all good things on the Internet, abusers came along to try and game the system. Jason Calacanis posted a spam he received, with links going back to Squidoo pages, as an example.

Calacanis also mentioned in a separate post how some SEO folks he chatted with on his podcast adored Squidoo for its ability to “game the system.”

“If SEOs love your platform you have a HUGE problem,” he said.

Google has evidently noticed the issues with Squidoo. As a result, plenty of Squidoo pages have been knocked back in the search results since July 7. Squidoo announced anti-spam changes to the service on July 5, but it appears that was too late to stop Google from penalizing Squidoo’s offending pages.

Blogger Ed Dale suggested a trio of reasons why Google may be placing Squidoo sites lower in its rankings. Dale doesn’t mention spam at all, or low quality pages, as possibly being a reason for the changes.

Google tends to be straightforward in its anti-spam efforts. If Matt Cutts or others who do Google’s spam fighting catch pages that violate Google’s guidelines, the hammer gets dropped. That looks like the case with Squidoo.

Of course bad news or gossip tends to get more attention than good news. So if you were to create link bait, how would you do it? Probably discussing celebrities involved in questionable practices would seem to fit.

So what should we make of the following. Jason Calacanis has written a post asking, “Why is Seth Godin not talking about the Squidoo problem?” For those not familiar with Squidoo, it’s a concept developed by Seth Godin and described as follows:

Squidoo is the world’s most popular site for people who want to build a page about their passions. Highlight books, blogs, vids, online shops, or just spread the word about stuff you love.

Later in the same day, Jason Calacanis wrote another post acknowledging that Squidoo addresses spam concerns. However the previous day, Gil Hildebrand, Jr. of Squidoo had already given ‘An update on spam‘. So what was this all about: linkbait or link worthy? I’ll leave you to be the judge.

Comments

Tag:

Facebook, Friendster Signal Changing Tide

Like Internet dating in its infancy, social networks have graduated from something for the kids (with dating, it was the geeks) to a normalized part of society. Critics had similar concerns about Rock N Roll in its day, and short skirts, and tie-dye, and jazz and dancing.

Most likely there was a time when daily hygiene was tantamount to snobbery. Things change with acceptance. MySpace exchanged one stigma for another, immediately branded a site for teenyboppers, and then the fishing hole to catch a predator.

Despite that, and despite the concern that such a youthful audience replete with perverts would fizzle out over time, the site has continued to grow, even to the point that the majority of the 109.5 million visitors to MySpace users are now over 35, both according to comScore.

Of course, you know what happens when the grownups raid your secret hangout, right? The He-Man Womun-Haterz Club can’t thrive in a cloud of perfume, the mice can’t play with the cat around…choose whichever cliché you wish.

You might note also though that Rupert Murdoch is rumored to be looking for a way out, if he can exchange MySpace for a nice chunk of Yahoo.    

Anyone not signing up for MySpace these days (really, is there anybody?) are defecting to Facebook, Friendster, and Bebo. It’s not really defecting as much as it is double dipping, though. Over half of social network users maintain multiple profiles, flitting from network to network the way they would rooms at a party.

In the past six months, after Facebook opened up to non-collegiates and developers, the site has more than doubled in number of unique visitors, growing from 23 million users in December 2006 to 47 million in May 2007. During the same period, Bebo jumped from just under 11 million visitors to 17 million.

But the most explosive recent growth has been, surprisingly, from Friendster, a company that just so happens was awarded a US patent on social networking, signifying how long they’ve been in this game. The site has steadily grown since December from 18.7 million visitors to 24.8 million.

While that’s less than the others in terms of visitors, the site, and VentureBeat, point to the page views, spiking by 40 percent just last month to 9 billion. The company attributes the sudden spike to "fixing" the technology that stymied its growth in 2004, just as the meteoric rise of MySpace was to occur.

Friendster’s graph server, which made it impossible to manage four quadrillion factors (we’re assuming Venture Beat is using not using that number as hyperbole), has been revamped to more easily show how users are linked to their friends, and by what degree of separation, similar to a feature used on LinkedIn. But the main result of this revamp is that users are better able to track what’s going on with their friends, thus increasing page views per user.

While that may seem like cheating, it’s growth nonetheless, and of the others in the top seven networks – HI5, Tagged, and Piczo – Friendster is the only one not stagnant or declining over the past half-year. 

So what happens next? Who knows for sure? It seems Murdoch is thinking of jumping ship, perhaps just for a better opportunity, or it could be he detects the changing tide. Maybe Facebook is catching up too fast. Maybe Friendster is poised to sue the whole lot of them.

Or maybe it’s just the natural, social flux of things.

Some of the world’s smartest people keep their secrets tight to their chest.

Not Seth Godin. Seth is full of marketing genius and you can learn a bunch by watching him.

One of his new ventures is called Squidoo.

While attending a major trade event for eBay, Seth’s goal was to get everyone talking about Squidoo.

He succeeded. Here’s what he did:

We printed 600 t-shirts with a long, hand-written letter on the front, explaining how Squidoo helps eBayers. And we gave the shirt away to anyone willing to wear it. The incentive? Each day, Megan picked someone who was wearing the shirt and gave that person $9,000 worth of ads on Squidoo.

Within an hour, you saw orange t-shirts on the show floor. By the second day, every single t-shirt was taken and more than 5% of all the people there were wearing the shirts.

Total cost: $3,000. (plus the ads)

So by giving away free advertising on his site (which of course costs him nothing), he was able to get some great buzz going!

And, what is more interesting is that they had to strip their mannequin of its shirt (should have printed more Seth!).

Brilliant!

This is not the first time Seth has worked this angle. Check this out for example.

How can we apply such tactics to the Internet?

Comments

In the “Business” section, a site called Squidoo took top honors.  If you’ve never heard of Squidoo – and, to be honest, more than a few of the winners had gone unnoticed by me – it will allow you to make a “‘lens’ to market yourself, your products or just something that you’re passionate about.  View and rate other people’s lenses and hope your content is rated well by others!”

As for the “Search” categories, Rollyo came in first, Eurekster Swicki placed second, and Pipl got third, so the omnipresent Google was, surprisingly, not visible among the top three.  Simply Google did receive an honorable mention, however.

In my relatively random recap of the Web 2.0 Awards, the section on social networking comes up next.  Here we see at least one name that should be familiar to most: Facebook.  I know Facebook has claimed more than a few minutes of my life, and it managed to claim first place in these rankings, as well.  Mingle2 followed behind, with Imbee (a site aimed solely at kids) bringing up the rear.

And I believe that’ll just about do it for this summary of the SEOmoz monster list.  Here, however, are a few more sites that caught my eye:

Biblio (number two in “Books”)
Pandora (number one in “Music”)
LinkedIn (number one in “Professional Networking”)
Zillow (number one in “Real Estate”)
FeedBurner (number one in “Feed Management”)

Credit for assembling the original beast goes to Jane Copland, and my hat is also off to a number of judges and contributors who also played important roles.

• Online Marketing Blog
• DigitalPoint Forums
• John Chow
• Squidoo by Seth Godin
• Text Link Ads
• SEO News Blog
• Ecademy
• Connected Internet
• Real Estate Webmasters
• Rock My Monkey
• Paul Stamatiou
• Paula Mooney
• Alan Lewis
• v7n Forums
• Luca Filigheddu
• Find in Forums
• Encyclopedia Dramatica
• Oliver Stone
• Kineda
• Dingorue
• The Superficial
• The Blemish
• Journal Space

If you see any inaccuracies in the list or know of any other sites, please feel free to leave a comment.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.