May 18, 2006Squattoo
Filed Under: New Marketing
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Seth Godin is a great marketer. That's not always a compliment if one considers that All Marketers are Liars :)
Seth talks a great game. Question is whether he walks as good a game.
Take his new venture, Squidoo, which got Squashed on TechCrunch in a May 9 review. The article posits the following:
Now here’s the problem. If Squidoo doesn’t work out as planned, and I don’t think it will, Seth loses more than his time and whatever capital he’s put into Squidoo. He also loses credibility as an expert in product marketing. To borrow the metaphor, Squidoo could become an albatross around Seth’s neck.
...and then proceeds to tear the Squid from tentacle to tentacle.
Seth's credibility aside for a moment, Squidoo is looking more like a black sheep than a purple cow. In fairness, it is young and so to call it a dog, as opposed to a puppy might be somewhat premature.
...but what about Seth? I was a little troubled that he has remained conspiciously silent throughout this conversation. This is nary a Seth comment amongst the 118. Hell, even Sam Donaldson weighed in on the debate (a doppleganger perhaps?)
I discuss this further in next week's Across the Sound (ATS #33) and also answer a listener's comparison between Seth and Squidoo, and myself and the sponsor of ATS, [x + 1]
For now, let me plant this seed. Perhaps it's ok for a talker not to be a walker. Me personally, I try and walk my talk whenever I can, for example: UNM2PNM, my Nike Ad, Across the Sound, Jaffe Juice, etc. I don't always hit the ball out of the park, but that's ok. Academics are often lousy practitioners in the "real world" - you know that saying, those who can, do and those who can't, teach. But then again, that doesn't mean that people can't and don't learn from them. Perhaps the same is true for Seth et al
Or perhaps talkers should be judged according to self-proclaimed higher standards. Worse case scenario, they can always talk their way out of it, right?
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» Across The Sound episode 33 from n.sputnik
Joseph Jaffe responds to an e-mail I sent him in his podcast regarding Seth Goodins Squidoo, and how TechCrunch argues that it is failure. What I was trying to articulate to Joseph was whether he is going to use his new marketing approach wit... [Read More]
Tracked on May 21, 2006 3:11:10 PM
» cheats from cheats
cheats
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
procession but carrying a banner.
-- Mark Twain
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Tracked on Jun 14, 2006 12:59:22 PM
Comments
Joe,
I think your being unfair to Seth. Not only has he written many best-selling books on marketing but he sold his company Yoyodyne to Yahoo in 1998 for $30 million.
See: (http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,15555,00.html)
Posted by: brian
I don't think I'm being unfair at all. I didn't write the techcrunch article...I'm just asking the question whether it IS fair or unfair to hold a pundit/visionary/thought leader to higher standards or not.
Posted by: jJ
I don't necessarily think that just because a venture a pundit/visionary/thought leader tried ends up failing is reason enough to discount their expertise. They're going to fail just as often as most of us, not because they don't UNDERSTAND how to be successful, but because the skills required to THINK about it and the skills required to DO it rarely converge in a single person.
Posted by: Paul
Good point Paul. Does this mean in fact that P/V/T-L's should stick to P/V/T-L i.e. focus?
The other point here is that often times there are extraneous (sp?)/external factors which are uncontrollable and certainly unanticipated.
But what about the magnitude of Squidoo? It's a pretty big venture and I'm sure Seth put several eggs in this basket. That said, he's a pretty versatile guy and no doubt has many zags to counter the zigs thrown at him...
jJ
Posted by: jJ
Isn't there a famous anecdote of Peter Drucker hiring someone to run his wife's business?
If memory serves me right his assistant said something along the lines of "Mr Drucker simply writes about this stuff"
As TS Eliot said, "between the idea and the reality lies the shadow".
There is a clear divide between thinking and writing about a subject and actually living the subject.
Posted by: Ed
Hey, if you're going to call out the mistakes, blunder, etc. of other marketing efforts and products then you have to be willing to take it to. He does this all the time on his blog and in his books. I think that if he does not respond, then he has loss some credibility. It's easy to criticize, difficult to create.
Posted by: Paul Herring
I don't think anyone is questioning Seth as a P/V/T-L but just whether Squidoo is a good business. Squidoo is a great 'idea' but I agree with the Tech Crunch article, it has several short commings. I tried it and didn't find it very user friendly. That aside I applaud Seth for doing something, how many P/V/T-L actually put their money where their mouth is. If Squidoo does fail I hope Seth keeps trying new things. That being said I agree with Paul, that the real sin hear would be to not participate in the conversation.
Posted by: Tac
"'m just asking the question whether it IS fair or unfair to hold a pundit/visionary/thought leader to higher standards or not."
Also makes you wonder if Seth WANTS to be held to a higher standard or not. Personally if I had had the marketing success he has, I would want the higher level of scrutiny, which would, if nothing else, serve as more motivation to keep hitting the ball out of the park.
I haven't gone back to check up on the TC thread in a few days, but when I read it, I noticed that Michael was getting slammed for criticizing Squidoo, when one of his own startups, according to the commenters, had flopped. When I read the comments I wondered if Seth was staying out of the fray, thinking that the commenters were taking Arrington to task better than he could.
Posted by: Mack Collier
Without making any judgment on Seth—I'll offer up this observation. First a little background:
I've been working full time in Interactive media since '97. I operate a blog and can use numerous software applications including Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.
I checked out Squidoo—signed up and I have no idea how to use it. Really, I can't figure out what the thing is supposed to do. So I must be stupid. In the meantime, my Squidoo account is sitting out there—not doing much of anything. Someone please tell me how it works...
Posted by: David Armano
Joe,
I found this very interesting too. In the early days of Squidoo, Seth was regularly responding to any blog posts about Squidoo.
Despite Squidoo's shortcomings, it is still growing in traffic, as you can see by the following link. http://www.alexaholic.com/www.squidoo.com
It is also worth remembering that Seth often riffs about failure being OK - that those who fail have more chance of suceeding.
On Seth's Lens on himself (http://www.squidoo.com/seth/), you'll notice that he happily lists his failures).
So if Squidoo is a flop, I certainly don't think it's the end of Godin. The new web is new for all of us. Just because everyone's favourite marketer has a go doesn't mean he's going to get it right first time.
Posted by: Ben Rowe
I thnk that P/V/T-Ls have just as much right to try something out as anyone else does. But just because they do, doesn't mean they are going to have a higher success rate. In my experience, success comes from two things, a simple vision and an immense drive to achieve it. I think P/V/T-Ls tend to take simple visions, make them hugely complicated, and then sit back and expect them to succeed beacuse they thought it all through. I don't think Godin is like this. Well, not completely.
Posted by: Paul
I've been playing around with Squidoo since it first came online, and here's my take on it -- It's a tool. It's a hammer, a saw, a screwdriver (Squidoodriver?)
It's simply one more piece of equipment in everyone's marketing toolbox. Those that find a use for it will benefit. Those that find no effective use for Squidoo will be no worse off than before.
A blog was simply an online diary before people started using it for personal branding and corporate marketing. Music downloads were the domain of rebel youth before iTunes created a better tool.
As with most things in life, "it's what ya do with what ya got" that matters.
...What will you do with Squidoo?
Posted by: Don The Idea Guy
There's no such things as failures, just learning opportunities. So if Squidoo "fails" that makes Seth more valuable as a pundit, in my opinion.
BUT refusing to engage on the conversation is worrying and would lead me to question his expertise in what's happening these days. This could seriously undermine his positioning as someone who gets it.
I seem to remember that he refused to defend his use of controversial company, Buzz Marketing, too - even when a high profile blogger such as Jason Calacanis called him out.
And Seth doesn't have comments on his blog either.
Today's marketing is surely about listening and engaging, which seems pretty central to a lot of what Seth writes about. And his refusal to walk this particular talk is why I think he'll run into problems eventually.
Of course, it's nowhere nearly too late to change and I hope he sees the issues soon.
Russell
www.mobhappy.com
Posted by: Russell Buckley
There's no such things as failures, just learning opportunities. So if Squidoo "fails" that makes Seth more valuable as a pundit, in my opinion.
BUT refusing to engage on the conversation is worrying and would lead me to question his expertise in what's happening these days. This could seriously undermine his positioning as someone who gets it.
I seem to remember that he refused to defend his use of controversial company, Buzz Marketing, too - even when a high profile blogger such as Jason Calacanis called him out.
And Seth doesn't have comments on his blog either.
Today's marketing is surely about listening and engaging, which seems pretty central to a lot of what Seth writes about. And his refusal to walk this particular talk is why I think he'll run into problems eventually.
Of course, it's nowhere nearly too late to change and I hope he sees the issues soon.
Russell
www.mobhappy.com
Posted by: Russell Buckley
Seth's post today is the closest thing we've seen from him as a response to all of this.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/05/overnight_succe.html
Posted by: Ben Rowe
And he makes a very, very, very good point...
Posted by: paul
Which is?
Posted by: jaffe
That Squidoo is probably an overnight failure. And that's fine. That it is not a 'Purple Cow'. And that's fine too. Maybe it's another type of cow?
Maybe Seth just set it up because he thought it would be useful, helpful, a non-zero-sum move (as you say)? No point in trying to argue his merits if you don't know what he set out to achieve (do we know?).
Posted by: Paul
This just in. Seth's blog is now allowing comments.
Posted by: David Armano
