Ive heard squidoo is regarded really highly in the eyes of google but does it take a lot to maintain?!
Yes - it does take a lot to maintain. If you get one subject and make many pages, I think both Squidoo and Google will push the site your linking to up in the SERPs. It will even push the page on Squidoo up (you may have to do a little backlinking though)
I love Squidoo. Once you've created a lens (page) then I believe that your backlinks stay df - whereas I've heard that hubpages can change df to nofollow if you drop out for a while.
I would say - it takes a lot of post a good lens. maintaining is easy enough. Squidoo is a gold mine is used in the way it is to be used. The backlinks from squidoo will only increase the authority of your site.
Squidoo is starting to be classified as spammy. I know a lot of directories don't allow Squidoo and the same with social bookmarking sites.
Who told you Directories ever allowed squidoos,hubpages and blogspots. Jeezz! I don't remeber anyone promting their squidoo by submitting their links in directories. Pinging and social boomarks on some are enough to get them indexed. Do-follow blog commenting is more then enough to get your squidoos on first page for long tail keywords.
squidoo lens can offer you some quality relevant contextual backlinks. no, it doesn't take a lot of time to maintain a lens. once you build a lens and promote it to get it indexed, you dont have to do much anymore if you dont want to. but occational update of the content and few social bookmarking here and there can offer lot better result in the long run