Seth Godin's new company, Squidoo, has silently come out of private beta and into public beta, so you can go and play with it today if you weren't already a member. In a nutshell, it's a site where you share your knowledge by building topic-specific pages with links and resources, and then get a cut of the Adsense profits.

The promotional tactic used by Squidoo is pretty clever. Tell all your users you've launched but that it's kinda hush-hush, then watch as they all blog about it. Well, I'll join the queue ;-)

E-mail follows:

You may notice something special about Squidoo today.

We have quietly — and completely — moved out of the closed beta test... and into a public beta.

That means that anyone can visit Squidoo, find lenses, claim lenses, and build their own. We're thrilled to open our doors to the public, and to let everyone use the platform that you've been helping us test and improve these last few weeks.

But we're not going to tell anyone yet.

Except you.

So, now's the time for you to share what you've been working on during the secret beta test. Email your lenses to friends. Post a lens to your blog. Tell your mom. And, for a limited time, your friends will be the only people to know that Squidoo is finally live.

Thanks for working with us over the past two months. We can't wait to see how the general public responds to what you’ve been building!

Ready. Set. Squidoo.

Heath Row
Senior Director of Community Development
Squidoo

P.S.: Yes, it's OK to blog about this.