Clark - 5:44 pm on Sep 27, 2007 (gmt 0)

I don't mean to be a detractor, but thinking about this, it is a good move on AOL's part to do something with ODP. But unless they turn it into something completely different than it is now or was conceived of, it won't go too far imo.

Barring that, the best it can hope for is to do something similar to about.com, except instead of creating the content, have the managers just list the sites and become a very good directory.

Here are the major problems with ODP imo:

1. If managed very tightly, the "open" part as it relates to submissions and public participation can be a good thing. Because it can help humans make a web directory. But the very bad side of open is that the world does not need a huge database of content for spammers to litter the internet with. So to remove the spam from ODP would require stopping to release the data to the public. Which is a big part of why it exists.

2. The model doesn't scale. What is a "good" directory of, say online stores?
Listing only the ones you already know about? eBay, Amazon etc? We don't need ODP for that.
Listing the mom and pops? That would take thousands of pages for just that category.

Can it work eclectic content? I doubt it. Spammers will take over quickly.

3. The reason people loved ODP was the pagerank and the traffic it sent. There are too many people optimizing for traffic and generating too many sites. This model is a set up to pit a small force against an enormous army, many of whom are robots auto-generating content w/ the best of techniques and auto-submission tools. How is ODP going to get around it?

Therefore, to fix ODP means to redefine it and turn it into something else.