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.

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!

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!

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?