HubPages.com just launched today and I played with HubPages tonight and created my own Hub called ArtMetrics - all it has is my own RSS feeds for the three blogs I write for, Webmetricsguru, ArtNYC and SmartMobs.

It seems to me that HubPages is an easy way for me to syndicate my own work so that I might continue to benefit from the writings; I did not try to add anything else I just activated ArtMetrics and set up AdSense (that was pretty easy to do).  According to TechCrunch:

"Hubpages allows user to create topical web page (think Wikia or Squidoo) that also included blog-like modules like comments. Pages are tagged by the creator and by readers, allowing for quick browsing among related pages.

Users are encouraged to build sites that can generate revenue. A good example is a list of important books on a topic, or a review of a product (the best running shoe, for example). Hubpages will insert google ads relevant to the topic, as well as allow links to Amazon, eBay and other affiliate-paying retailers, and split revenue 50/50 with the page creator. Compared to Squidoo, which only pays 50% of profits to page creators, that’s a good deal.

I’m going to add a couple of more feeds to ArtMetrics and see if it generates any income.

"Can Hubpages succeed? If it will, it has to differentiate itself from Squidoo, which has yet to see significant usage growth. A key way to increase the likelihood of links to hub pages is to encourage the creation of regular fresh content via a blog-like module. Paul says this is in development, and also adds that it’s so easy to create new hubs that beta users have been creating new ones regularly. Readers can subscribe via RSS to an individual author’s hubs."

Huh!  So Seth Godin’s Squidoo is not doing so well?  I would have thought, based on the way it’s plugged that people would be using Squidoo more.  I myself created a Lens a while back but done nothing with it.  It was too hard to figure out - but this thing with ArtMetrics seems much easier to me - and since this is my own writings mostly, if I can come up both though my normal posting AND via ArtMetics, why not?

One thing they can improve on is how the RSS Feeds are displayed.  ArtNewYorkCity.com ’s feed is fine - just the first couple of lines of text is shown. However, Webmetricsguru.com shows the whole post - and that’s not really such a good thing for this kind of thing - it just takes up so much of the page real estate.  Also, while SmartMobs.com feed seems to work when you subscribe to it - it is not working with HubPages.com - again, don’t know why.

I think I’ll add Amy Crehore’s blog feed to my ArtMetics "blog".  I just want to be careful not to dilute the themed content too much. Hmm, King of Cats!!!! to much Amy, you too much!