Hey folks. See what happens when I get busy and take my eyes off screen for 1 day, it erupts!

Not sure how I feel about all this. I admire Seth's brilliance but don't think he appreciates everyone else may not be up to where he is thinking or understand his service as he does or actually be able to keep up.

I know I've had two lenses on Squidoo for ages, since it first went beta. I started using it as a 'collector' of my activities in one place (see www.squidoo/dnw) but only got so far as the 'beta-bugs' were tripping my progress up. I submitted support feedback but was mostly left in the dark. Which is how I'd describe my squidoo experience generally. I was surprised Seth saying no one has contacted him about so and so. I personally never really understood the concept enough to know what I should be asking. That is most likely because I'm 'spread thinly' over many projects.

I'm impressed with how squidoo performs now. It seems to have solved the beta-bugginess. But I'm still not exactly sure where it fits in to my particular scheme of things ... I'll do some more investigating and will find out over time no doubt.

Dave - Lifekludger

www.lifekludger.net 

www.dnwallace.com/blog

 

if we're going to give thousands (so far) or tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity, why aren't 501s asking me to be included?

Gee, Seth, could be because they see Squidoo for what it is: an advertising pyramid. This makes it grubby and grasping and not something they want their names to be associated with. They have, after all, their reputations to think of. And that's exactly the point: their reputations are what you are after. If by some miracle you can persuade 3,000 of the New York Philharmonic's strongest supporters to endorse Squidoo, you not only get additional hits for more brand advertising on the pages they create (understanding as I do how your mind works, I can't help wondering what sort of kickback arrangement you have set up with kids' winter clothing manufacturers), you also get free use of their name for promotional purposes to help persuade other non- and for-profit organizations to do likewise. At the risk of bludgeoning a point, your intent is as usual to benefit yourself, not non-profits.

It's a similar approach to the one you took to the marketing of The Big Moo. You asked people to buy the book galleys (50 at a time at $2 a pop) and distribute them "to people in organizations with the will and the ability to pre-order a dozen or more copies of the final hardcover." Cute angle. Saves a lot on postage and encourages prospective and, hopefully, influential prospects to treat your book with more consideration, coming by way of a friend or a fan with a glowing and possibly sincere testimonial. It also helps to convince Penguin that your book might actually generate some interest even though individuals are not buying the galleys individually but are instead buying them in bulk, giving the impression that not just a mere 1000 groupies, but a multitude of 50,000 individuals are just desperate to read other people's insights collected and edited under your name.

I bought and read the Big Moo. I was curious to see if my deep mistrust of anything Seth was justified. It was. What I found most crafty about it was that you were able to persuade the 33 people who provided the material to remain faceless. As readers we do not know who wrote what. Again, cute angle: you get the credit for a book you did not write. I regret plonking down my cash since I'm sickeningly sure that somewhere along the way I contributed to Charity Seth and would have been better off in this case donating directly to a charity of my choice. A kickback kind of guy such as yourself just has to be taking a cut. At the very least, your name is associated with a book you didn't write and which appears to be selling, and at the most, Do You Zoom, Inc., the holder of the copyright (a company, not surprisingly, controlled by you) is providing Seth Godin with some form of compensation for coordinating the effort.

It would be interesting to read your publishing contracts and the agreements you have made with Squidoo advertisers as well as a transparent accounting of the revenue and expenses associated with both The Big Moo and Squidoo and other 'charity' initiatives you have engaged in. To expect charities to trust you, I think it is reasonable of them to ask to see your accounts, ALL of your accounts for ALL of your companies, subsidiaries, proxies, etc., including any off-shore holdings of any kind.

Hi. Seth.  Thank you for taking the time to respond.  This is not about my feelings — it’s about whether it’s fair to disparage nonprofits for not using Squidoo, especially when some of your suggestions for how they could use it are off base.

Your opinion of nonprofits is informed, of course, by your experience.  (And I know you do some cool things, like the Big Moo, to support nonprofits.) In my experience, the distinction you draw between for-profits and nonprofits is false.  Are nonprofits really any more “stuck” than for-profits?  In his paper Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer, Jim Collins says, “We must reject the idea—well-intentioned, but dead wrong—that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become ‘more like a business.’ Most businesses—like most of anything else in life—fall somewhere between mediocre and good. Few are great.”

Similarly, it’s not about old ways vs. new ways — it's about the right ways.  Never did I suggest that an organization like the Philharmonic stick to the old ways.  I was only criticizing your particular example of how the Philharmonic might use Squidoo, i.e., asking 3,000 donors to create Squidoo pages about kids' winter clothing.  Making this request of donors would send a very confusing message about the Philharmonic brand.  Second, there's no way 3,000 donors would agree to each create a Squidoo page (lens) on kids' winter clothing, and even if they did, it's unlikely they could motivate 10-20 friends to buy clothing from their page.

As I wrote before, I found your paper to have some good ideas for how nonprofits could use Squidoo -- perhaps some innovative soul will create a Squidoo lens on that very topic.

It seems to me that both perspectives here have a lot of validity - a. that too few nonprofits are actively embracing new communication tools relative to the potential of those tools and those of us excited about the potential can get frustrated some times. B. That there are some very inspiring nonprofits already engaging with new communication methods and mechanisms and focusing on their work can do wonders for adoption and inspiration. I know I usually try to focus on my feelings of inspiration more than my feelings of frustration, but sometimes frustration rears its head!

Acknowledging both feelings is probably the most honest way to engage with things. Want a shot of inspiration? Check out the interview with Jason Hudson of South Africa's Freedom Toaster project just posted at http://netsquared.org/hudson Yay! Let's keep our spirits up!