Different sites emphasize and support different kinds of content, inevitably, based on the philosophy of those who run the site and those who use it. Hubpages seems to me to attract and nurture “writerly” type of content, as reflected in its very look and feel, with a handwritten logo and a clean, professional magazine appearance. A quick glance at Squidoo’s cartoon monsters and bright crayon colors suggests that it’s taken a different approach and is designed for a different audience.

Squidoo’s shift towards the WAHM market started around 2008, and was officially recognized when Seth Godin wrote in Feb 2009 on the “Getting Started” page of Squidoo that:

We don’t gather demographics, but anecdotally, it’s pretty obvious that we’ve been hijacked by some of the smartest stay at home women and moms and independent writers on the web. Not by design, but by luck.

I was briefly appointed one the volunteer staff members in 2008, and observed the same thing during my short tenure: my three fellow “community organizers” were all work-at-home moms. A lot of the categories, challenges, quests, and awards they gave out were geared towards that demographic. That trend has continued as two of them have been promoted to full-time staff members, helping guide the site with their vision and enthusiasm.

For a long time, Squidoo had an officially sponsored “Rocketmoms” group similar to Hubpages’ apprenticeship program, except that it was uniquely marketed towards the WAHM demographic. The assigned topics and challenges, again, were what a lot of Squidoo members call “cupcake” lenses — not just cupcakes, but any kind of stereotypical “mom stuff” — birthday parties, kids toys, cooking recipes, etc.

Recently “Rocketmoms” has been retired and expanded to “Rocketsquids.” However, five years of reinforcing and rewarding the “mom and family” demographic and content means that Squidoo has a lot more of that than anything else. Whereas I don’t see Hubpages privileging or being dominated by one particular niche or demographic to that extent.

Obviously, there’s a lot of content on Squidoo that ISN’T written for that demographic, but over the years, non-WAHM Squidoo members have expressed a sense that we’re more or less on our own, receiving less official Squidoo support, existing in the periphery rather than front and center. We understand and accept that WAHM niches are a lucrative market — something that impacts all of us, due to the way ad revenue is pooled and distributed.

In short, I believe that the traffic chart above reflects the dominant content niche on Squidoo, NOT so much the actual distribution of moms to non-moms on either site.

I personally am grateful that Hubpages does NOT emphasize the WAHM demographic over the rest, because it means I feel more comfortable writing there. (If you ever plaster the header with bright colors and cartoon mascots, I’ll scream!)

I also worry about the number of Hubbers who use paid links on Redgage as backlinks. Google specifically considers paid links to be bad, and has said so many times. (Google should stuff it; who are they to say people can’t use links as a way to earn a little income? But it’s Google’s search algorithm, and they can decide what to favor or penalize).

Perhaps Squidoo writers are more focused on niches that have been hit with Panda and Penguin.

It is interesting the trend on squidoo of so many homeschooling and family oriented lenses. From what I can see so far on wizzley, they are promoting sales articles that are at the same time informative to a greater extent than are the squidoo lenses.

It will definitely be interesting to see what develops.