HIRE ME TO SPEAK
HIRE ME TO SPEAK

Seth Godin’s Squidoo

I write about strategies to turn fans into customers and customers into fans. I also share ways to use real-time strategies to spread ideas, influence minds, and build business.

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Seth Godin is innovating again. The founder of Yoyodyne (which he sold to Yahoo in 1998), the creator of “Permission Marketing” and author of “All Marketers are Liars” is launching a new venture called Squidoo. What’s really interesting to Web marketers and bloggers is that Seth is launching his company exclusively through viral marketing from people like me. Hats off to Debbie Weil for alerting me to Seth’s new venture.

Seth has kept this one really quiet. Until now.

I was lucky enough to meet Seth a few weeks ago at Factiva Forum. He was a keynote speaker and I moderated a great panel on blogging. We spoke for a few moments about my book (which he kindly provided a “back of the book blurb” for – thanks Seth). In the short time with him prior to his talk, the speech itself and the Q&A session, he didn’t mention Squidoo at all. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t keep such a secret. But Seth knows that a good viral Web effort relies on a bit of secrecy and intrigue.

Here’s some of what’s on the Squidoo site: “For a long time, the web has been about more. More links, more traffic, more hits, more choices. In the face of all that more, many sites (and most surfers) are not getting what they want. This free ebook, from bestselling author and Squidoo.com founder Seth Godin, proposes a different way of achieving your goals: less.”

The ebook is classic Seth: well-written, short, funny, provatative. Download it here. Some highlights: Squidoo is about lenses - a way to filter one person’s view onto a single page. By looking at a person’s lens, we can quickly find what we are looking for. A person who makes a lens is a lensmaster and he or she uses a lens to provide context. Everyone is an expert and Squidoo helps them to share with the world.

This venture will be fun to watch. And hopefully I’ll participate when it is launched.