SQUIDOO.COM GOES 2.0

Irvington, NY - Squidoo.com this week announced version 2.0. With nearly 60,000 user-generated pages pointing to the best stuff online and donating royalties along the way, Squidoo is the fastest-growing philanthropic community site on the web.

Every Squidoo page (called a lens) can now be turbocharged with Plexo, a simple service that allows each visitor to rank blogs, books, movies, songs, and soon even YouTube videos and Flickr pictures. Using a simple up or down vote, the millions of people who visit Squidoo each month can cheer for their favorites in any category—or submit their own.

Plexo joins the other Squidoo features (eBay auctions, Google maps, iTunes songs, Amazon shopping, RSS feeds and more) and makes it even easier for people of all levels to present a snapshot of information online, so that searchers can find exactly what they’re looking for. Fast and with meaning.

"Squidoo started as a way for one person to share his ideas, recommendations and expertise on a particular topic, in a free and easy and interesting way. Now we're going a step farther and letting lensmasters open their lenses to their readers for a new level of collaboration," said Megan Casey, editor in chief of the site.

See below for a Q&A with the site's founder, Seth Godin, about Plexo.


Q&A About Plexo:

Q: What's Plexo?
A: Plexo is social bookmarking meets Digg meets the long tail. It allows anyone to host their rank list—to become editor in chief of one small slice of the best of world we live in. The best live jazz albums, the best blog posts about design, the stupidest members of Congress. Plexo lets you easily do what a blog can't… it lets you engage your audience and have them vote, every day if you like, on the most important issues to you.

Q: I've never been to Squidoo before? Why should I make a Plex lens?
A: Why should magazines and reddit.com have all the fun? Find a topic and become the center of it. Plexo lists become the watercooler on any topic, for anyone.

Q: I'm one of your top lensmasters: why should I put Plexo on my existing lenses?
A: Squidoo was designed to make it easy for people to come… and to leave. To provide a filter of meaning. Plexo gives people a reason to come back to your lens. It's the easiest way we can think of to create return traffic.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Plexo?
A: Watching the scuffles at the bottom of the Digg pyramid, it became clear that there just isn't enough room on the front page of Digg for all the stuff worth seeing. So what if there were 100 or 1,000 or 100,000 front pages?

Q: Isn't Plexo just Digg for the long tail?
A: And isn't Superman just a good samaritan? Donovan just a folk singer? The Wizard of Oz just a movie?

Q: Do you think Plexo will change the spirit of recommendation that Squidoo was founded on?
A: Every Plexo still has a human editor, a front door to keep out the spam and to keep the voting on topic. That human component, the responsible party—that's what just might be missing from existing voting sites.



About Squidoo:

Squidoo LLC was founded by bestselling author, noted blogger, speaker and Original Squid, Seth Godin. The stated function of the site is to enable extraordinary people to painlessly engage in philanthropy. Nearly 50% of all Squidoo users donate the royalties they earn from the site to charity. Nonprofit Squidoo partners include the American Heart Association, The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, roomtoread.org, and 50 other well-known organizations.