In the comment section of a recent blog post, Carrie asks:

What's behind your choice of Squidoo as a platform for your new site? Were there other ones you considered and rejected? Ones like Joomla or Drupal.

For those of you not following closely, Carrie is talking about not just one site but three soon to be followed by others including:

• The Coal Country Chronicle, soon to be an information hub for news and views from the Pennsylvania Anthracite region
• Tamaqua Gateway Gazette, a similar Internet hub about a small town I used to live and where I still own a home (Are you in the market?)
• Ocean City Fever, about one of my favorite vacation destinations Ocean City, Maryland

The idea of launching these three sites and others to come was simple. I am trying to bootstrap a venture called Postranger.com, a company that could best described as part, blog platform, part social network and part message board.

Without programming experience or the financing to build the network I envision (I've not yet found an existing platform that does all the things I'm looking for in a social blog network application) I'm focusing on generating revenue through created content.

Though I think after checking out both Joomla and Drupla recently that both have intriguing possibilities, I picked Squidoo for a couple of simple reasons:
• Ease of operation. Squidoo really is an easy way to build a website and though I find some features like photo loading a bit tiresome compared with blog platforms, overall it's simple and fast use
• Revenue potential. Squidoo has a whole menu of revenue generating tools from Google Adsense to Ebay and Netflix ads that are easy to set up. Setting up additional revenue generation on most blog platforms is often another tedious step.
• Limited rules. Squidoo doesn't have a lot of silly rules to constrain a content creator from making a simple and small business out of providing content. In fact, Seth Godin, the entrepreneur behind Squidoo even uses the site to promote his stuff.
• Unlimited potential. With the ability to rearrange and create what seems to be an almost limitless number of new modules, Squidoo could easily be the next step in the evolution of the blog itself. Imagine a Squidoo lens updated regularly with the newest stuff on top.

Hope this answers your question to some degree at least, Carrie. Thanks for the comment.