Irvington, New York - December 14, 2005 - A new search engine and information retrieval service based on personal recommendations launched last week in beta. The new service is named, Squidoo, and is touted by the company as the next step in reinventing the way people find and create information online.
Squidoo uses the power of personal recommendation. The core strategy of the service is to host millions of handmade pages, called "lenses," each a focused, useful guide to some area of expertise. Lenses can dramatically decrease a person's time spent poking at traditional search results trying to piece together information. Lenses snap meaning into focus, fast.
Squidoo is designed to help anyone build a simple, free web page that points to blogs, online stores, maps and other information on a single topic - any topic. Each page can contain insight, bullet points, links, products and pictures, and other user content. The pages also earn royalties for their creator or for charity.
Everyday experts, called "lensmasters," build these lenses quickly and easily on topics they know or care a lot about. Squidoo allows bloggers to build a personal, permanent pointer to their best posts (and get more traffic). It provides an easy way for companies to educate their prospects (and improve their visibility) by building lenses about what they know. And it gives everyone a platform for building credibility, spreading ideas, and raising money for their organization or charity - just by talking about what they know best.
In addition to thousands of unknown experts, Squidoo is also being used by individuals like Jeff Jarvis, Chris Anderson and Jane Goodall. Major organizations are busy building an online presence inside Squidoo as well.
''A lens is the perfect middleman between the content and expertise you've already got, and the surfers you've never met,'' said Squidoo founder Seth Godin.
The service recently launched from secret beta to public beta with nearly 5,000 beta tester lenses on topics ranging from understanding the Nuremberg trials, how to make fondue, and rules for playing Sudoku to The Long Tail, graphic design, and DIY.
Once the initial expenses have been paid, Squidoo will openly divide the money it generates with its lensmasters.
Mr. Godin added, ''Our goal is to act as a co-op and to pay as much money as we can to charities and to lensmasters.''
Squidoo was started by entrepreneur, blogger and best-selling author Seth Godin. His lens is located at: http://www.squidoo.com/seth .
For further information about Squidoo, please visit: www.squidoo.com .
