A Guide to SquidooGroups Changes: Part One

The powers that be at Squidoo have announced that some serious changes will be made to the way groups are managed at Squidoo.com. If you have not already read Kimberly’s post on the SquidU Review, it has plenty of detail about the current changes, and more to come in the near future.

Here are the highlights from Making Groups Great: Do you have what it takes?

“As of right now, no new Groups can be created.”

If you were thinking of making a group to fit some of your newest, best or loneliest lenses, it will now have to wait. As the SquidTeam sorts through existing groups to see what’s what, their job will be made easier by a halt in new group creation.

No word yet on when groups will be opened up for creation again. If you’d like to sound off about it, you can join in Groundswell’s SquidooGroups debate.

What this means for lensmasters:

For the time being, we no longer need to wonder if any new groups have been created that would benefit from the submission of our best lenses. In addition, this closes one avenue that might keep us from polishing our existing groups and lenses. And of course, it means those of use that might have been making groups will just have to make new lenses instead.

“We’re setting our expectations for your existing Groups a little higher.”

The SquidTeam is checking up on groups that have already been made. They want to see who has been running groups that make good use of the tools provided, and who is stepping up to the plate with the new standards.

What this means for lensmasters:

If you’ve made groups that don’t fit in with the intended purpose of SquidooGroups, you’ll need to do one of three things:

Close the group. Many groups have been disbanded already.

Transfer the group. Plenty of lensmasters would be happy to take over for you. Just make a post in the SquidU Groups forum and let everyone know it’s up for grabs.

Improve the group. More on that in an upcoming post!

“We’re going to choose up to 100 of the very BEST groups on Squidoo and unlock a special tool just for them. These groups will fit a list of our criteria and be nominated by SquidStaff and our Angels.”

Our SquidTeam is looking for the best of the best, and whoever makes the cut gets a special prize. Once again, our beloved Squidoo is rewarding members who do more than the bare minimum.

What this means for lensmasters:

If you’re already running groups to the best of your ability, you could be getting a nice bonus tool this summer. If you’re running groups with a minimum of effort, you’ll need to pull up your socks and polish your group mastering skills (or give someone else a chance to do it by transferring your group).

It also means that our lenses which are in groups (especially these top 100) may be getting a little more love in the future. A good group showcases their best lenses, so if you’ve been wishing your lens would get featured more often, you may see it come true.

“We won’t be shy about locking spam or junk or abandoned Groups over the next few months.”

SquidU forum users have been asking for this for a long time. Most savvy lensmasters know that poorly run groups are more of a drain than a boost for our lenses. We don’t want the lens that we worked so hard on lumped in with just any old fluff.

What this means for lensmasters:

In addition to the groups that have been voluntarily closed since the announcement, we’ll be seeing a lot of our other groups disbanded in the future. Even if you’re pretty careful about the groups you join, if they’ve been abandoned, they’re getting the boot! Our lenses will have a much shorter group list as a result.

Though this may temporarily cause drops in lens rank, it could be offset by improvements made in groups that are here to stay. Only the SquidTeam knows for sure what lensrank will be doing.
It also means that we’ll never have to comb through endless groups looking for the ones that have something good to offer.

High five!

Photograph by Mark Thayer

The Big Charity Payout

If you're not following the Squidoo Blog, you may have missed the recent post about the unclaimed royalties policy. During the upcoming Squidoo royalty payout, the Squidteam will be donating all earnings on accounts that appear to be inactive.

That means that all lensmasters who have not recieved any payouts in the last 12 months will have their earnings redirected to the Squidoo Charity Fund. So essentially, charities are about to benefit from some of the stinkier lenses out there!

If you've been stockpiling your royalties, you may need to take steps to make sure you receive your payments.

Check out the post on the Squidoo Blog to learn more.

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.

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!

It's Good To Be Bad

So, ironically, The Worst Lens Ever Made is actually one of my best lenses. For the last few days it has been sitting at #5 on my dashboard, just hovering under my holiday lenses. It's been ascending in the overall rankings, and even broke the top 100 Squidoo Tips lenses. Who knew?

I found it interesting how difficult it actually was to create a slapped together lens. I began simply enough, by selecting one of every keyword driven module I could find. But once I had thrown those keywords in, there was so much more to do.

I wanted to pinpoint not only the faults of using these modules carelessly, but also other issues that many of us have with rushed lenses, such as poor language, lack of module titles, and a zero layout planning. When writing each module description, I tried to get inside the head of your average spammer-type, and figure out what they hope to accomplish when they add each module. I wonder if I was close? Sadly, we may never know.

Some things proved more diffcult than others. The New Delicious Bookmarks kept coming up blank. Apparently not a lot of people are using the tag 'Squid". So I logged in to Delicious, Googled "squid", and saved a few bookmarks of my own. For the Twitter module, I decided that it would be better to use "Squidoo" as the keyword, so that all of the Tweets showing would point back to lensmasters.

Even though the entire purpose of the lens is to parody pages that have no effort, it still needs touching up now and then. But I guess that's what separates the good lensmasters from the not-so-good ones. We just can't stop improving.

Take that Spammers!

I've had it up to here with poorly made lenses! And here's why...

Whenever one of my new lenses sheds it's Work in Progress status, the first thing I do is start searching related keywords and topics so that I can create a nice, juicy lensroll. I love the lensroll tool a lot. Most of the lensmasters that I recognize and interact with regularily I've met by finding their lenses on one of my keyword hunts. I think one of the things that makes a lens great is how many other lenses are in that little sidebar, and how many of them would be of direct interest to anyone who is reading that lens.

For instance, when I made my Top Ten Movie Vampires lens, I went looking for other content related to the films and characters that I had highlighted. I was really pleased to find a bunch of great lenses about "The Lost Boys" that were fun and interesting to read.

Sadly, I would say that at least 65% of the lenses that I look at for possible 'rolling are not even worth the bandwidth they're written with. The introduction draws me in, hoping that I'll find some thoughtful content that teaches me something new about the topic. But once I scroll down, all I find is a variety of non-written modules showing different things related to the topic. It's as if people start up the workshop and just add one of every keyword driven module possible - give or take an Amazon or two.

For example, when I made a lens about Christmas movies, I wanted to find a lens that was just about "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". I looked at about 10 lenses, and most of them were just a bunch of Amazon and eBay modules of Grinch movies, books and toys. Eventually I got so fed up that I didn't even want to search for any of the other movies I had written about on my lens.

It reminded me of The Best Squidoo Lens NOT To Do. This parody is about lenses that are just landing pages for webstores, a place where tasteless people try to get you to buy their stuff. While these pages are annoying, at least they're trying to hock their own products, and not cash in on hapless Google searchers. I've seen so many of these keyword sales lenses, I've started making a note of checking out the makers' bios - they're so identical that I'd swear it's one person making them!

I decided it was time to shine a spotlight on the stupidity of these Giant Squid wannabes. They churn out worthless lenses, hoping to get some recognition and cash, meanwhile wasting the time and patience of those lensmasters who actually take their Squid responsibilities seriously.

So I made this: The Worst Lens Ever Made

Enjoy!

Naughty Squids

Life is so full of ironies, and Squidoo is no different. When I created my first group, I was eager to get started and build a community. I decided not to put any criteria up, so that no one would be discouraged. If I honestly didn't like something, I would send a polite message to the lensmaster saying why their join request was declined. I really didn't see any terrible lenses, and that was fine by me. So, when I created a second group, The Armchair Critics, I decided I would post up some criteria. Of course, not even twelve hours later, I had two emails saying that there had been a lens request for each of the groups. One of them had nothing to do with the group topic, and the other one was just bad. It's funny. I'm almost certain that the only people who would stop to read the guidelines are the ones who already know what a good lens looks like!

Whenever I receive a request for a lens that hasn't quite gelled into greatness, I always direct them to the HQ page. I keep a running list of some of the great Squidoo tips lenses out there. I know that when I first became a Squid, I had no idea that there were so many tutorials around. I wonder if the people I message ever get around to reading them? From now on I might also send them this link: Joining Groups (from aj2008's Squid Etiquette Lens).

I'm such a ninny, and I hate telling people what to do, but if I didn't I would post my top five yucky lens pet peeves in my group guidelines. I can still remember what it was like when I was first figuring out what Squidoo was all about, and what it can do, so I try to be sympathetic when I view an awful lens. If I wasn't so nice, these Squid-Don'ts would send me running every time!

Mortira's Top Five Worst Lens Traits

5) No bio filled out, no 'Contact Me' enabled, no picture!
This is the sort of thing you should do as soon as you create your account! That's like showing up for work without your nametag and uniform.

4) No Guestbook module.
This is only forgiveable if the rest of the lens is really polished, and 'Contact Me' is enabled. Sometimes leaving out a guestbook makes a lens look more professional, but anonymity does not.

3) No original content.
If all of the written content is just copied from Wikipedia, I won't even bother reading it. I came to read a lens, not a wiki. If you're not passionate enough about something to write from the heart, then it's probably not something you should be writing about at all.

2) Poor writing.
I appreciate non-anglo writers who try - I don't even know two languages, so kudos for them! What I don't like is text with all caps, or no caps, or no punctuation, or all slang. We're talking about creating websites, not texting our friends!

1) No unique module titles.
This drives me totally bonkers. When I see a module called something like "Great Fishing Stuff on eBay" I actually twitch a little. The word "Stuff" doesn't belong in a heading unless it's part of a cliche. Such as"Does Obama have the Right Stuff?". When I read a lens, I don't want to feel like I just walked into a high pressure retail store, either.

Well! I feel better now. I'd rather point someone in the right direction than tell them that they suck. Sadly, some people don't even care if they're going in the right direction.

The Best Lens Ever

Fellow lensmaster Susan52 posted this lens on Twitter: The Best Squidoo Lens NOT To Do. It's a pretty clever example of the worst kind of lenses, a way to show lensmasters that their Etsy (or CafePress, etc) showcase needs some work. Since I love sarcasm, and hate bad lenses, I have dubbed this 'The Best Lens I Have Ever Read'.

It's really quite brilliant, especially to those of us who do put a lot of effort in, and can't make good lensrolls because we can't find anyone who actually has anything to say about relevant topics. GrowWear really hit it on the head with this one, and I hope a lot of shabby lensmasters find it and get the point.

Sadly, there really is no teaching those types, most of the time. The kind of people who have been ruining the internet since the beginning are just multiplying today. No matter how strongly you suggest that "NE 1 4 cyber?" is not a sentence, or a realistic way to greet someone, they just keep doing it. Don't these people have parents?