What's All the To-Do about Squidoo?

I ran into an old friend the other day while dipping my toe into the world of Squidoo (thanks again to the Make It Great Guy, Phil Gerbyshak). It turns out when you register at Squidoo, you get a welcome e-mail from none other than Heath Row, the former Company of Friends coordinator and Social Capitalist over at Fast Company magazine.

I used to be the coordinator of the Fargo chapter of Company of Friends until the company dwindled to just me. But I still recognized Heath's name when it popped up. And the really funny part of that is that he e-mailed me today to tell me that a friend of his lives in Fargo and he wanted me to know that he was going to have her contact me. What a small, small world it really is!

So, on to this whole Squidoo thing.

I'm still not really sure what it's all about. According to the Squidoo FAQ section,

A lens is one person's view on a topic that matters to her. It's an easy-to-build, single web page that can point to blogs, favorite links, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, Google maps, eBay auctions, CafePress designs, Amazon books or music, and thousands of products from hundreds of other trusted merchants. You can pick whatever content you want to put in your lens to bring context to your topic. Then, when someone is looking for recommended information, fast, your lens gets his started and sends him off in the right direction. It's a place to start, not finish.

I do know that some of the topics of some of the lenses out there are a little more than I need to know (I never really felt old until I looked at the Top 100 Lenses ... wow!).

But when Seth Godin talks about Squidoo, there must be something to it. I do know that it's generating a TON of web traffic (this comparison between Squidoo and Ford Motor on this chart from Seth's e-book "Flipping the Funnel").

So I'm out there - you can find both of my lenses here. Let me know what you think!