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People like to know when there’s a surprise inside.
They like to know what’s to come.
They look around to see who else is here.
They often feel more comfortable when others have gone first.
They like to hear a little bit of activity.
They gravitate toward ‘popular’.
They appreciate a small cue to tell them what people are saying.

Because there’s so much goodness happening on lenses, so many social layers of people commenting in Guestbooks, following you on Twitter, voting in Polls, adding items to Plexos and arguing in Duels, we thought it would be interesting and useful to help call a little attention to them and help web surfers answer the question:

What’s happening? And: Who else has been here?

When they can answer that, they’re more likely to dive in and participate as well, or at least get stickier and stay on your lens a little longer (until you tell them to leave, by recommending some action for them to take, like buying a book or visiting a blog).

That’s a lot of conceptual preface for a pretty small but cool new feature getting released next week. We’re calling them “social bursts.” You can see a static preview here (on a test lens, that is).

You’ll only find them on social modules that have some reader-driven participation baked in. The tooltips appear on mouseover only, and quickly dismiss when someone mouses away.

Just another entry to be filed under: Squidoo trying something new to help readers stick on your lenses.