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A review of Seth Godin’s e-book about the search for meaning online.

This e-book is mainly an exposition on using Blogs and RSS to create a new online experience, secondarily it is an “infomercial” for Godin’s Squidoo.com Lens Portal.

Everyone is using the Internets to find something, and “Search” has become a billion-dollar industry. However, when you are searching for something on any of the various engines, you are likely to find thousands (if not millions) of results. In which case you haven’t really “found” anything! Having too much information is only a little better than not having enough. It takes a long time to seft through all of those search results to find a meaningful answer to your query. To quote Godin:

“The engineers who built the Web believed that if they presented the ‘right’ answer, intelligent humans would be pleased. In fact, before you get it, before you discover the meaning, there is not right answer.”

The Unfulfilled Promise of Web 2.0

The promise of Web 2.0 is creating networks of meaning through conversation, a two-way interaction. It is about the construction of user-generated Networks which are easily found, searched, and navigated. The entire purpose of these Networks is to speed up the process of actually finding what you are searching for: a meaningful answer. Godin calls this network “a place where one can go for instant context on their search“, he calls it a Lens. The purpose of a Lens is to answer the question,”What do I need to know?”

“A lens gives context. When it succeeds it delivers meaning. A lens can tell you which books, records, and websites are the best way to appreciate Miles Davis. A lens can show you the ten most important things you need to know about copyright on the web. A lens can highlight the key players in the hospital crib business and give you the confidence that you need to go ahead and buy something - without worrying about whether you missed a key player or didn’t understand a critical choice.”

The Lens Points to Content

The idea of the Lens-driven Network is to make a particular lens your starting point when you are searching for something. Because a lens provides context, rather than content. The lens is an aggregator of “pointers” on a particular subject. The components of a lens: Links, RSS feeds, Adsense Ads, all are things that “point” to content - Blogs, Websites, and even other lenses that contain trusted and meaningful information.

Here is the good news (quoting the Squidoo main page):

• Squidoo is free
• You can earn royalties $$$
• You can generate more traffic to your blog & website
• You can build credibility as a trusted guide
• Improved SEO rankings

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? In fact it is good, and it is working. Affiliate programs have popped up all over the place on the Squidoo servers to drive more traffic and make more money.

It is also not working, in a sense, as there are quite a few people creating lenses that either do not have the time or skills required to invest in making a truly useful lens. I spent some time looking around for a meaningful Getting Things Done lens, and didn’t really find a thorough one. In fact, many of the lenses, on any given topic, do not live up to their potential. My impression from reading Everyone’s an Expert was that the lens would be a tool for creating a more meaningful experience, starting a new conversation and increasing the power of the Internets. Not just another sign that says “Look at me.”

So I built a lens. Yes, it does have a link to this blog, but the main purpose is to give the lens value through context. The information is about Getting Things Done, and for creating your own global microbrand. I have designed it to be a (somewhat) open system, with links to several other blogs that I have found to be interesting and useful.

The Lens is Collaborative

You can go to the GTD System Lens and see the resources that have been assembled, consisting of blogs and sites that I have found, others that were suggested to me, and still more that have volunteered to join the Community. There is a fun feature of the Squidoo system that allows you to create your own Mini-Digg with these site. Visitors may rank them by voting, and add sites to the Plexo that I may have missed (feel free to add your own!). You can even get the Plexo as a widget for your own site (see sidebar) and increase your exposure that way.

The idea of the GTD System Lens is to create a community, and give valuable information. The Ultimate Getting Things Done Index is a lens of sorts, in that it pulls together all of the RSS feeds for every blog that discusses GTD. The GTD System Lens is designed to create value, credibility, and context for the various resources that exist for Getting Things Done.

Go ahead and download Everyone’s an Expert here, and get to work on your own lens. Then come back and tell about it!

Related: Doc Searls is talking about linking and the search for meaning too:

What matters most is relevance, especially if what you want to do is constructive. I don’t know how to bring relevance to the fore, but I think we need to try. To its credit Google Blogsearch defaults to sort by relevance (they also sort by date, the current default at Technorati), but it misses many of the results that Technorati catches, which is why I tend to use Technorati more. Also, I’m not sure what Google means by “relevance” is actually what’s most useful for the reader’s purposes.

We still need that.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6sby5n. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen