As said earlier, I can't log into the Squidoo's official forums, therefore, I'm left with no other choice but posting my thought here. After all, everyone's allowed to say a word about a thing they think they know about, isn't it?
So, my word would be about "spun content". Well duplicate, copied and spun content are a big no-no on Squidoo since long ago. Just refer to the originality pact and you know what I talk about.
However, these past months, we've been told that "spun content" wasn't what it actually is. They consider spun content those famous and infamous "shower curtain" lenses as spun content. Well that can be spun content or that might not be that at all. All in all, spun content was considered by HQ as low amount of content on lenses. Mixed with what they consider "cookie cutter" lenses, it was quite confusing and absolutely untrue.
Honestly, I've never seen those lenses - they were locked by the time I saw HQ's post about them - note that I was shocked because of this finger pointing: after all, the toilet seats lens wasn't better than this one and HQ should have pointed that one instead of the one of an average lensmaster. Moreover they violated their own laws by finger pointing someone while doing so is strictly forbidden on Squidoo!
Anyways, back to my topic. So as I said, I've never read those lenses and, therefore don't know how they looked like neither what their text was. Text might have been spun... It might not having been spun. After all, you're not left with many words when talking about the same topic 100 times, do you?
However, for a long time, we've been told that spun content was content particularly light weighted, not personal (yes, uncle Bens and aunt Martha), content that wasn't over informational. Though there was very few information about the fact that spun content is just content that's not absolutely personal and absolutely unique. No, not amazing! Content can be unique but can be not amazing at all!
Spun content is content that's been produced from spinning an article : take an existing article, replace the words with synonyms and you have a spun article.
Spun content is content that's been produced from spinning an article : take an existing article, replace the words with synonyms and you have a spun article.
There are softwares that do that pretty fast with a result next to zero. There are softwares that do that pretty fast with a result of 7-8/10. You just can't get a perfect outcome from anything that was handled by an automatic tool. Those tools can rarely discern the difference between the exact meaning of YOUR words and the meaning of THEIR thesaurus.
Naturally I could take an article from a website and put it into that software and turn it into a brand new article in no time. However, it would be most of the time hard to read and won't always make sense. Moreover, I'd have used a STOLEN article which isn't something I want to do.
Instead, I could take a PLR article, run it into the software and produce a brand new article. That is something I could do for a personal site, not for a writing platform like Squidoo that isn't mine and doesn't allow such behaviors.
The best thing to do in such cases is take a PLR article and use it as a base for a brand new article entirely rewritten with my own words and turned into my own writing style - which is quite basic in English.
Still I don't do this. But this is something I could do.
Back to the forum topic. This time, the spun content thing was detailed by an HQ member. And the post let's us know that, finally, HQ's stance on "spun content" is:
Spun content is not too much information – it’s taking content that you didn’t write, modifying it and trying to pass it off as your own.
Spun content is not too much information – it’s taking content that you didn’t write, modifying it and trying to pass it off as your own.
Did HQ finally read my blog (or many other Squid's blogs talking about the same subject) ? Did HQ finally understood what spun content is in reality ? Because it's not the same old song that we've been hearing for so many months!
Actually, here's what Wikipedia says about "spun content".
Article spinning is a search engine optimization technique by which blog or website owners post a unique version of relevant content on their sites. It works by rewriting existing articles, or parts of articles, and replacing elements to provide a slightly different perspective on the topic. Many article marketers believe that article spinning helps avoid the feared penalties in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for using duplicate content. If the original articles are plagiarized from other websites or if the original article was used without the copyright owner's permission, such copyright infringements may result in the writer facing a legal challenge, while writers producing multiple versions of their own original writing need not worry about such things.
Still, HQ locks lenses of outstanding lensmasters with the "spun content" message! Seems that, while they understood what spun content means, they haven't gone to their automatic emails and/or filter messages to let them know that they get it wrong.
Posted by Squidoo Angel Prosperity66
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