Laisha - 1:28 pm on May 30, 2010 (gmt 0)

The "NewHoo" days lasted less than a month. FAR less, if I recall. I always thought it funny that Yahoo got upset about the supposed trademark violation -- which I would have fought if it were up to me -- but had no problem at all changing its own structure to match ODP's. But maybe I'm biased. :)

"Sunny" is a good way to describe Zeal.

That directory came about during a pretty heated political fight in ODP, and as a result, many ODP editors, craving the easy editing and apolitical atmosphere which had slipped away at ODP, ended up there.

The big draw, in the case of my husband and me, was the fact that Zeal would pay a small amount of money for each edit to the charity of your choice.

The Lupus foundation got quite a bit of money from me during that time.

When they sold out to LookSmart, it was a sad day, but there were still other directories which were all-volunteer, and which many ODP editors participated in.

ODP was the best search world "experiment," due in large part to Skrenta's genius and ability to think outside the box, and to the creativity and resolution of hundreds of core editors.

But, IMHO, the day of the volunteer directory are over. There are enough directories which pay to support those who are hardcore editors quite well, thank you very much. :)

But as I said, I believe that the ODP model, which dominates the internet now, is over. Those are the directories which can be compared to link farms. But you have several "up and comers" which are totally different from that model, and those are the ones which have been, are, and will be successful in the long run. In my opinion, of course.