Earlier this morning, I wrote a quick update about my experience so far on MySpace, an online community especially suited to hormonal teenagers, but with some potential for more mature political networking.
I’ve also been trying another online cooperative community to see what kind of potential it might have for enhancing the presence of progressive political causes online. It’s called Squidoo, a name that evokes tentacles stretching and exploring dark corners and crevices - something that the Internet is quite useful for. As it happens, Squidoo is mostly virgin territory when it comes to politics, so I have been able to set up the first and only pages, or lenses as they call them there, on Squidoo dedicated to Russ Feingold’s budding campaign for President in 2008 as well as for the Squidoo lens to serve supporters of Hillary Clinton for President in 2008 as well, though I’m less personally enthusiastic about that prospect.
So far, my experience with Squidoo is positive. Lenses and their modules are easy to set up - though many of the news modules have no options for customization by keywords, and the RSS feed modules need to be supplemented by XML modules as well. There is but one generic module which allows one to write text and html in freeform, but that module seems to have the most potential so far. If I use that module, however, why would I choose to do so on Squidoo?
As with MySpace, my forays into Squidoo will have to be a long-term exploration. In order to fairly judge anything on the Internet, it’s important to use it over a lengthy period of time, to allow things time to develop, for links to be made, and for people to interact. I’ll be reporting back on more of my thoughts on the world of Squidooing in the weeks to come.