mcskoufis - 2:39 pm on Oct 12, 2006 (gmt 0)

How many "communities" can we all be a member of, in order to assure their economic viability?

As many as our websites' needs are. Although such directories are not as popular as the big-boys are, they can be usefull. I am sure that they are not only focusing on building a directory, they are looking for ways to bring traffic in, not just any traffic but geographically local traffic (since you started this thread by an example directory for only two places).

Their economic viability can be broken into 2 pars.. One being the sites that want to be listed and the advertisers. After bringing traffic in, they will be desirable as they can offer a good alternative for both parties.

The recent problems some new websites have with getting good ranking in Google's SERPs have forced new sites look for alternatives (at least I have). We are looking for an alternative to the Google dependency and Google's arbitrary and controversial (for some) ranking rules (=algorithm).

** I am talking about Google here because they own multiple times what others do from the search market (searchers), thus making traffic from them negligent (personal opinion here).

Therefore their economic viability is not threatened, at least for the foreseeable future...

What happens when the mayor and his buddies decide to move over to WebsiteB? What happens when the locals "go political"?

I think these are both political questions... When a major and his budies move somewhere else, usually this happenes because businesses traditionally support the mayor candidate of a political party over the others...

Such politically motivated moves are decided because they somehow see harm to their interests. You can always turn to the mayor's opposition to support you, given that things went "political"...

has made a few people a lot of money

I don't think that many think this way... Google's business model would have been a disaster if that was true... The same applies for things like Microsoft...