Giant Squid: I Was Right!

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I got to the required 50 lenses just in time to submit my "resumé" to the two people who look over the lenses to make sure everything is in order. Surprise! I didn't get accepted.

Actually, supposedly the lenses are lacking in several areas. I'm assuming they mean length, possibly originality, and lens ranking.

I'm alright with that. The only real reason I wanted to become a squid was for the 4 yellow stars (which boost lens rank on whatever I choose) and the extra tools--which I'm still trying to find out what those tools exactly are.

Length
As for the length, I've talked to a Squids about this. It's ridiculous in my opinion to even consider, but most Squids do. Many times a pages worth isn't related to the quality of content, but the length.

I could list examples, but just head over to the top 100 lists in each genre and see for yourself. Many of the pages are actually simply a paragraph of original text, followed by ads upon ads, Wikipedia articles, many comments, the highlighted lenses, and more ads.

Of course, I'm looking at this as a users perspective and not Squidoo's. Squidoo wants money. They are a business. However, if I'm looking for information on a specific subject and land on a lens similar to what I described above, I'm leaving. I might scroll down the page or check out the "table of contents" but that is about it.

Furthermore, if I'm coming from a search engine and land on a page 10-miles long, I'm not going to stay too long to find my answer.

My point is, many of the top lenses don't meet the needs of the average user. They meet the needs of bored users on Squidoo.

Originality
Many of my lenses aren't "original" to the extent of the subject hasn't been covered before. However, I feel that my pages do offer something the others don't. For example, my poet pages. The others I have seen simply include a long Wikipedia article, ads, comments, more ads. Mine on the other hand at least include some of the author's works and style of writing.

Ranking
My lenses are, for the most part, low ranked. They are new and I didn't bother to promote each one individually.

Conclusion
They are probably right for not including me. I *can* do more. Will I? Well, that depends on how busy I am before the next deadline and if I get bored enough to spend hours upon hours of writing a Squidoo lens which may or may not do any good.