Three groups that I was a member of closed in the past week. Two of the groupmasters entered a reason why they disbanded the group in the notification email. Both were basically due to the level of effort to maintain the group and lack of participation. No idea why the third closed.
I wasn’t an active participant in any of the three but I am sad to see the “Dads of Squidoo” group close down. It was one of the first groups I joined on Squidoo and I always thought it was a good group theme.
Maybe I’ve been lucky or it’s because of their niche focus, but my two groups don’t take much time to maintain. I get the occasional off topic submission but those are dealt with easily. I doubt they’ll get to a point where I want to shut them down completely. At worst, I would just post a note that the group is closed to new lenses.
With many lame groups being created daily, it’s getting tougher to sift through and find ones worth joining. Fortunately, Spirituality did a lot of the work for us by building the Great Groups Guide. It’s a cool and handy guide to focused groups that actually feature their members’ lenses. What a concept! (Full disclosure: both of my groups are listed on the lens.)
August 18th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Agreed, there are many groups that aren’t focused, and I don’t understand the purpose. There are also lenses that need to close that don’t (there is one I submit to that has never accepted a lens/mine or others). I takes quite a bit of time to find appropriate ones and I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I find the process of adding lenses to groups very tedious, and I don’t thnok that many groups have given my lenses much benefit, but you never know. A good focused group is great to have, but finding a decent group is very hard.
August 18th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Good groups can be of some benefit to your lenses. I get occasional traffic from groups that feature member lenses. It is tedious to find good groups that are 1-Related to your topic and 2-Well run. I spend less time bothering to look any more.
August 18th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Groups should really be run by dedicated people. That’s why I disbanded my group. I didn’t have many lenses in it, but that could be due to my lack of promotion of the group. Yeah, I don’t think I’m cut out to lead groups right now.
August 25th, 2008 at 5:10 am
I made that lens out of frustration. I’m very curious what the new roll out for groups is going to be, because it’s so necessary.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
This is great info to know.