DO YOU SQUIDOO?

I'm a LensMaster at Squidoo. I master a lens. A lens at Squidoo.

WHAT'S SQUIDOO?
Well, to quote it's home page, Squidoo is "a place where smarties like you flaunt your expertise and benefit from that of others--think Friendster meets Wikipedia." LensMasters are people who think they know a lot about a subject - so much in fact that they are willing to manage a "lens" - a listing - of links to information on that subject. LensMasters generate royalties from visits to their lens which can be automatically given to charities or pocketed in the LensMasters Paypal account.

Squidoo is like Wikipedia in that the information published there is edited not by true experts but by web users. However, while not immune from spin and prejudiced creators, Squidoo's lenses are not encyclopedic pages of "facts" but only links to web sites and other available resources containing "facts." Squidoo is a node - like Google, connecting people to places where they MIGHT find what it is they're looking for. Squidoo and other lenses and lens collections are simply the next step in the further democratization of the internet: the open-sourcing of reference material.

WHY MASTER A LENS?
Marketing. For free and for the investment of a few hours (I've only spent minutes so far) a lens can be created. That lens will be visited by potentially thousands of seekers who can then be directed to one's business, blog, website, products and friends by reading one's LensMaster profile or by including links to one's one web pages.

WHY SEEK INFO AT SQUIDOO?
You can help determine what information on a subject is seen most and how it's perceived by rating poorly the lenses that are inaccurate and rewarding those that get it right in your opinion. The ability to control the information accessible to others gives you the same rush that stiff-haired big network anchormen only got high on before. You're "THE MAN" now.