Great discussion going on here.
Just my opinion. Squidoo is a good place to be used as part of your overall website promotion.
As you have already alluded, gone are the days that one could just put up a site or blog and start to attract organic search engine traffic.
Because of the competitive nature of online business, you will need to do a few things, submit articles, post on forums, social bookmark or network and the list goes on.
I think that is where squidoo comes into perspective. Unfortunately a squidoo lens is just like another sub-domain - mini-site - blog.
Why? because once you decide that you are going to build a lens, be prepared also to optimize the lens for the search engines, continually update the lens, build traffic for the lens...
Just like anything else online their are benefits and disadvantages attached to using a squidoo lens.
