Service: Squidoo

What it is: A platform which gives members the ability to establish themselves as authorities on any topic, using "lenses" -- tools that layer in content and let members promote themselves.

Failings: Lenses are a mess, in terms of organization. For example, different lenses created by a single member are not clearly grouped, and an increasing number of goal-oriented lenses are making it difficult for visitors to browse through lenses in a fluid manner. Search needs work, and self-promotion is difficult. The service also has some strong competition, including various Google-owned services and Wikipedia.

Turnaround potential: Cleaning up the lens options and navigation will let visitors and members use the site more effectively. Squidoo has launched some great lenses that offer prominent, central resources which users can read and contribute to. For example, the Monkeybrain lens prompts members to list pros and cons of certain issues, and includes related Web resources such as links, images and videos.

'Net views:

Jason Calcanis: "Frankly, I think Seth [Godin] has fallen to the dark side and has become a Sith Lord of SEO, deceptive affiliate links, and page-view gaming."

Netvestor: "After some time using it, I learned that squidoo is a bad development platform. It is convenient for making mini niche sites, which a lot of people misused to create spam. … Google realized that and heavily penalized squidoo rankings."

monosodium: "[Promotion] should be squidoo's job! if you have to work your butt off to promote a lens, then you might as well get your own site."

Management: Seth Godin, Founder; Megan Casey, Editor-in-Chief; Corey Brown, Vice President and Managing Director; and Gil Hidebrand, Jr., Chief Engineer.

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