Squidoo was such a particular brand of Web 2.0 internet vibe. I kind of ended up loving the damn thing. And as often seems to happen once I've gradually accumuulated lots of content representing an absurd number of hours that I worked on creating it, that was right about the time they decided to pull the plug on a pretty unique idea that doesn't seem likely to be revived any time soon, if at all.

Anyone could create a "lens" on Squidoo, which was just their name for a web page focused on a particular topic. You didn't need to be an expert, and your motivations didn't have to be purely commercial or academic or anything in particular. The feeling was that regular people were making lenses about things they either enjoyed, felt passionate about, wanted to share with others, or were hoping to sell to you.

That kind of freedom and range of topics resulted in some pretty great stuff, as well as tons of spammy garbage. I never got the impression that Squidoo didn't care about the less trustworthy stuff, they seemed to do what they realistically could at that time to reward the content-rich pages while penalizing the blatant SEO crap riddled with Affiliate Marketing links.

I had Squidoo lenses on a suspicously wide range of topcis:

1. How to turn your PC into a karaoke fun house, more or less
2. A lens for every ebook I ever self-published on Amazon
3. How to publish your own book on Amazon
4. How to setup a new Paypal account after getting banned
5. How to make money on Fiverr (back when it was hot)
6. 1,000 more lenses of questionable authority

I'm joking, it wasn't 1,000.

What made Squidoo so different from the souless content farms that sprung up to fill the void it left was 1) It offered a variety of different content types you could use on a lens and 2) this made them both fun to create and fun to visit.

Unlike the plain text list of idiotic steps on how to tie your shoes that came from sites like Examiner or Instructables, Squidoo let you add quizzes to a lens. Amazon affiliate links to products. Cool looking formatted modules that would make certain text stand out. Ranking lists that visitors could vote on. I'm forgetting about a dozen others I used regularly.

You can debate how much of the content was spam vs. authentic, but the experience didn't usually feel devoid of humanity. Whether it was a newbie stumbling through how to appropriately use Clickbank affiliate links or someone who was just passionate about karoke and not trying to sell you anything, the experience of Squidoo felt authored compared to the sites that rose up in its absence.