The Internet is like a huge sea of words, posts and products. But three sites stand out as publishing venues that mix video and interaction with knowledgeable articles. This article is a review of Squidoo, HubPages and Tumblr from the author's perspective, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I am just one user.
First Analysis: Each site has it pluses and minuses.
- All three are easy to use and fun.
- They seem to have good reputations on the web.
- They all offer a mix of video, photography, writing, and participant interaction.
Squidoo
I'm starting with Squidoo simply because it is the first one I found. My first experience with Squidoo was love at first sight. Squidoo is a very fun site. It has this little squid that pops up and congratulates you on how great you are doing, and it lets you pop videos, ads from Amazon, yellow sticky notes, comments and polls into your pages. You can put together a very nice page with a lot of content very quickly.
On Squidoo a page is called a "Lens." You can write a lens on any topic, and some of them are quite extensive! Lenses are networked together using tags and categories to help your published posts be found in the mix.
When I discovered Squidoo I thought I found the holy grail! As a web designer I'm always looking for ways to help promote my customer's sites, and to make a little money on the side with content. I've been using Youtube videos as advertising and Squidoo pages were a perfect place to give my customers more visibility. I created a few lenses just for fun, and quickly progressed to information about my customers, featuring their Youtube videos.
The darn Squid got me though. At first that thing seemed like a lot of fun, until it became my enemy. I actually learned a lot about relationships from the Squid.
During my first month on Squidoo the Squid would pop up and congratulate me every day that I signed in. It started giving me prizes and trophies for being so great. It promised me that if I signed in for 30 days in a row I would get a huge wonderful surprise. Every day the Squid counted how many times I had signed in and posted, and also gave me prizes for visiting other lenses and posting comments. I signed in every day for 23 days in a row.
And then I got busy for a day. I didn't sign in until 11:30 that night... and apparently that was to late. From that day forward the Squid stopped counting my days, and I never heard about the huge prize again. But that wasn't the end of it, the Squid started calling me a spammer.
I tried posting some lenses about an outfitting company I work for, and it was refused. Whitewater rafting on the Salmon River in Idaho was called questionable with poor content and links to unsafe sites. What? I sent a few of my questionable lenses in for review. The first reviews were simply ignored. I finally sent one in with a very threatening note, and got a reply with them agreeing that whitewater rafting on the Salmon River wasn't questionable at all. They allowed me to publish that post, but the very next one I tried also got tagged.
The Squid had now become my arch enemy rather than my cute little cheering section. I learned that it doesn't matter how many good experiences you may have with someone, one or two negative reactions is all it takes to really ruin a relationship... even with an imaginary Squid.
The other problem I have with Squidoo is that they take forever to publish your posts. And it is an indeterminate amount of time. I click "Publish" and the Squid will congratulate me on a job well done. But when I go look at the lens in my account it still shows as unpublished. Sometimes, a day or so later, it will suddenly show as published. Other times I come back a week later and find them still unpublished. I republish and have to wait another indeterminate amount of time to see it in print.
On Squidoo your lens is not considered "complete" until other members have commented on it. In fact, you have to get a giant Squid to 'like' your page before it is really considered complete. I spent a lot of time viewing other lenses and voting just to get my pages looked at. It was very much like having to participate out of duress, and never really seemed like fun. So I have to also give a thumbs down on community building in Squidoo.
Turn About is Fair Play
To be fair, I do have one more good thing to say about Squidoo. I publish a number of blog sites, and have to combat spam daily in the comments. In Wordpress blogs the people who comment are allowed to enter their websites which turn into links in their comments.
In my blogs I delete a good 95% of comments as spam. But when I seen one linking to a page in Squidoo, I usually accept it and it's because I know that Squidoo is tough on spammers. I figure if they got through the Squidoo spam blockers (which I can't even do half the time) then they are probably legitimate.
Final analysis on Squidoo:
- Their page tools are very cute and fun to use
- I still hate the Squid
- Their spam controls and ratings are terrible because they call me a spammer when I am trying to do a good job.
- Their spam controls and ratings are great because you know you can trust Squidoo pages
- There are a lot of very good lenses on Squidoo that people have put a lot of time and effort into composing. I always learn something interesting every time I go there.
- Squidoo does not use subdomains so many (most) of the good titles and keywords are already taken and you have to give your pages obscure titles to compensate.
- Perhaps if I put more effort into my lenses I would like the site better.
- So, to be fair, Squidoo is a very good publishing site and I recommend it (just don't mess with that Squid!)
HubPages
I was delighted to find Hubpages after one terrible day battling the Squid. My first impression of Hubpages is that it is a Squidoo for adults. Cartoon characters don't pop up and tell you anything. HubPages blessedly leaves you alone to publish your content.
I started out gingerly with my first post talking about how trepidatious I was in starting on another site. I was able to ad a video, photographs, Amazon products and a comments section with ease. The post published instantly, actually published. So I was very pleased.
Then I was surprised. Several HubPage members commented instantly on my post and welcomed me to the community. It was like they were real people. No giant squids or people desperately looking for "likes" on their pages. Nice.
HubPages keeps me informed with useful emails on a regular basis without spamming me. They compile my comments and other information into a weekly email that is very useful.
Final Analysis on HubPages
- Easy to use, with good tools.
- Honestly, they don't have quite as many fun tools as Squidoo.
- Pages publish instantly and I am not called a spammer at HubPages.
- HubPages gives each author a subdomain so you can choose any page titles, as long as you don't repeat yourself.
- The community isn't under duress, and feels friendlier and more responsive.
- Once I am signed in I get confused because I can't get back to the home page any more and have problems figuring out how the feed works.
- Unfortunately, HubPages don't feel as cool as Squidoo Lenses. I don't know why.
- Hubpages has some amazing hubs published, and I learn something new every time I go there.
Tumblr
Tumbler is the "Twitter" of the video publishing world. Tumblr is like a reduced Squidoo or Hubpages. Instead of posting long pages on a particular subject, you can add a bunch of little things. You can add a quick thought in a text post, or post a video. You can post some pictures and add captions. You can post a quick quote, or even just post a link.
Unlike Squidoo and HubPages, Tumblr does not offer a way to monetize your posts. Like Twitter, it is hard to figure out what the heck is going on, because posts stream by. But Tumblr is a very fast and pleasant way to create posts on a topic, and to send juice to your other internet pages.
Final Analysis on Tumblr
- Tumblr is quick and easy to learn.
- It's a great site for interlinking your various projects
- Tumblr makes more sense than Twitter because you can actually put some information in your posts.
- I recommend Tumblr as a great addition to any web presence.
In conclusion, all three sites are worth using. As always, on the web, it is good not to spread yourself too thin. Creating a good presence on all three sites would be very time consuming. It is free to set up accounts on all three sites and certainly worthwhile to give them a try. I hope my review has been useful!
Connie Delaney - Connie Delaney writes from Salmon, Idaho where she is a web designer, occasional funny girl, and Dances of Universal Peace leader.
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