Squidoo

Seth Godin was the first entrepreneur we backed at Flatiron Partners.  His company, Yoyodyne, was the first company we sold to a portal (Yahoo!).  His blog was the first blog I ever read.  And it appears first (or last depending on how you count) on my blogroll.

Seth is an important guy in my life and an important guy in the life of the Web.

So when he announces a new company and a new mission, you must pay attention.

The company is called Squidoo and Seth is launching it in perfect web 2.0 form; with a blog post and a free ebook.

The service is not live yet, not even in "closed beta", but Seth is getting the ideas, the mission, the purpose of Squidoo out there for everyone to discuss, debate, dissect.  That’s so smart.  He’s building interest and attention up before the service is launched.

Of course it’s easier for Seth to do this than most anyone on the Internet.  His blog is the 70th most popular blog on the Internet according to Feedster.  So he has a unique advantage in launching a company.  And he is using it.  Smart move.

So what is Squidoo about?  The SquidBlog says:

We’ve built a platform that makes it easy for anyone, even a newbie,
to teach people about topics they care about. We believe that everyone
is an expert about something, and the Squidoo.com platform is designed
to make it easy to do that.

It’s a guide (like about.com) and
a reference (like wikipedia.com). It’s a place for personal expression
(like typepad.com) and an open platform for real people (like
del.ico.us).

You’re probably too busy to have a blog that’s
up-to-date all the time, but we’re betting that there’s a topic (even
if the topic is ‘you’) that you’d like to start the conversation about.

If you go read the eBook, you’ll learn that Seth and Squidoo propose to do this by allowing people to create lenses.

The way I look at it, lenses are personal landing pages that are created about a topic of interest that you are an expert in.

And therefore Squidoo is about creating a peer produced network of personal landing pages about everything in the world.

A big ambition and as we all know, the execution of the idea is what matters.

I am looking forward to creating a lens and participating in this new thing as soon as I can.

You can too.  Go give Squidoo your email address.