Sunday, May 07, 2006

A New Kind of Portal II

No sooner than I post on Zimbio do I find yet another interesting take on "portals". This time it's called Squidoo and I think I like it too, albeit for different reasons. Squidoo does things a bit differently than does Zimbio. First, Squidoo portals, or "lenses", are maintained by a single person and not by the community at large. Second, Squidoo earns revenue from Google AdWords and shares that revenue with the Lens Masters (those "experts" who have made Lenses on various topics). Both models are unique and interesting in their own ways. I'm very curious to see if these can pass the "wife test". Will they become simple and useful enough to catch on past the early adopters? Squidoo's problems are that it's a "walled garden" (as far as I can tell) and that it doesn't open communication lines between users. These two factors might seriously hinder its potential.

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