Squidcast Abuse

One of my habits as a lens master is to check in with my “Favorites” tab to see what people have been up to. It’s usually what I do between lenses, when I can’t decide what to do next. There’s usually an interesting Squidcast or two to check out.

Recently, I found that nearly every item on my Favorites page was from the same lensmaster. I won’t name any names, but this person constantly sent updates about the same lenses and groups, without any indication that there was new content to be seen. They usually seemed like generic advertisements.

I’m not one to judge what a person uses the Squidcast for - to each their own. What bothered me about it is that there were so many, all of the other people I am following were getting bumped before I could get a chance to see their Casts. There are so many things that I could be doing while I have a chance to sit down at my keyboard. Flipping back through pages and pages of Squidcasts is not one of them.

After a few weeks, I finally got up the nerve to head on over to the lensmaster’s profile and leave the fan club. I’ve never unfavorited anything before, and I didn’t exactly enjoy doing it, but enough was enough. I wonder if I should send along some advice on how not to annoy your fan club?

Join the Squid Police

Here is some food for thought: Is "Squidoo" A Dirty Word?

It may not be just yet, but it is starting to feel that way. Anyone who tries to use StumbleUpon, Mixx, or Digg to promote their work on Squidoo may already be feeling the burn of everyone else's bad karma.

A lot of the bad feelings are still lingering from Squidoo's first taste of Spam, and subsequent incidents of bad usership. Far too many people have come to think of Squidoo as a place for spam and irrelevant content.

And who can blame them? What if every time you searched for information via Google or Yahoo, you had to sift through dozens of pages of "Great Stuff on Amazon!", without finding the answer to your question? I know it bugs me when I'm looking for lensroll content, and that's all I find. It must be equally annoying for non-Squids who are trying to write book reports or learn new skills.

So what can we do about it? Bad behavior should be reported whenever it violates the Squidoo Terms of Use. Don't be shy. If you truly believe that a lensmaster is not on the up-and-up, it couldn't hurt for someone at HQ to check in on their activities. This way, we can help weed out those lensmasters that are making the rest of us look bad.

Proving Me Wrong and Stuff

A while back, I was in the mood to rant, and I listed My Top 5 Most Annoying Lensmaster Mistakes. I say my top five, and not the top five, because what is considered good behavior can vary from Squid to Squid. Anyone who spends a lot of time over at SquidU knows that there are all kinds of opinions on things such as adding guestbooks, leaving star ratings, and all of the things that Squids can choose to do during their day.

One of the things that bugs me most about hastily published lenses is the default module title. A close runner up is the only slightly different module title. As I've said before, the word "stuff" does not belong in a headline, or title.

Well, according to Susan52, that's exactly where it goes! Recently on I Squidoo, Do You? she explained that one of her lenses actually dropped in lensrank when she removed the word stuff from the title. This is a great example of why having a lens title that appeals to your target audience is ideal. If possible, it's probably a great idea to use the exact phrase that your reader would type into Google.

I think it might be time to go and have a look at some of my titles, and see if anything needs a good tweaking. And stuff.

A Warning to Etsy and eBay Sellers

Now that the holidays are over, I've gotten back to writing about my main passion - beading. My first lens of the new year is all about ways to use the very easy and traditional daisy chain stitch. As is my habit, I've been blogging about it where appropriate, and today I stopped in at CrafterZone to share Variety Beading: Daisy Chain.

While browsing the forum, I came across a post about a new US law that demands all products made for children be tested for harmful substances such as lead. Apparently Big Brother's panties got in a twist about last year's product recalls. You may remember that many products from China and elsewhere were pulled from shelves because of high lead and amphetamine content. The solution? Ban all children's products that have not been submitted for intense screening.

The problem of course, is that the law as it is applies to everyone and everything, including products manufactured in the US, and those made by home crafters. The result is that if the law should be passed, no one will be able to sell handmade toys, blankets or clothing at farmers markets or online, unless they pay the fees to have tests performed on each item they make.

If there is any truth to the article, then this is bad news for many Squids, especially those that have made lenses just to help promote their home shops. Under the new law, selling products that have not been individually tested will be an offense that could result in fines and even jail time. You can read about this latest economy drain at Digital Journal. I won't go into the endless number of ways that this law contradicts what is needed for the North American economy at this time. We all know it's just bad karma all around.

If you are a US citizen that will be harmed by this law, you may be able to take part in the lawsuit against it.

The Face of Spam

Anyone who spends any amount of time working or playing online knows that there's always some kind of spam lurking out there, just waiting to pounce on you. Generally, the term spam refers to unsolicited information in the form of ads, email, etc. We all know it when we see it, and wonder how on earth people who create spam still manage to attract people to their site, product or cause.

When we find a nasty little fish (or phish!) in our spam filter from "Sales Blaster" or "asdfjkl.com", we usually delete it without looking. But does anyone stop and wonder what kind of person wrote such an email? Who is the man or woman that so shamelessly invades our space with their nonsense?

Recently I had the opportunity to meet a spammer almost face to face. One of my groups received several join requests one day, four of which were from the same lensmaster. This in itself isn't unusual, so I didn't think there was a problem until I started reviewing their lenses. Each of the four pages had similar titles, and nearly identical content. All of the links pointed to the same website, and there was little to see besides a short blurb and an Amazon module.

Because my groups' guidelines specifically state that all lenses must have original written content, I had to deny these lenses from the group. It didn't help that they were barely related to the group topic as well.

When I went to the lensmaster's bio page to let them know why their lenses weren't accepted into the group, I noticed that these four lenses were the only works so far made, and the lensmaster had only been a Squidoo member for a matter of weeks. I don't remember how I worded it, but I let this person know as politely as possible in my message, that their content was spam-like and not the best use of Squidoo. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt...sometimes people are making honest mistakes.

I checked back in with this person's bio later, and discovered that they had added a few new lenses - all of them about credit card debt. So that was the end of that relationship. It became obvious to me that I had met a real-life spammer, and I found the experience very confusing. Here was a real person, with a photo and a bio and everything. And they were doing things that I normally associate with facelessness and codes. It's certainly possible that the photo and blurb provided were totally fake, but there's still a breathing person behind these meaningless contributions - a person who is capable of making better decisions.

I'm very glad that I know better!