Zeal is to close

[Genie]

The announcement was made by Looksmart on Monday that Zeal is to close on 28 March.

[Chris_D]

If it is a bad joke - why hasn't Looksmart denied it? Danny Sullivan has blogged about it, and the Editor post remains.

Surely if it were incorrect - then that post would be removed by Looksmart - with a denial.

Although - on the other hand, its probably not the first time Looksmart has gone to sleep at the wheel...

[Genie]

A Looksmart insider has posted about it [searchlounge.org...] . Looks totally genuine to me.

[hyperkik]

DMOZ had two big advantages over Zeal: The free use license for its RDF dump, and its permitting editors to include sites of all varieties.

I was told by a (former) AOL employee that AOL continues to make money through its internal use of DMOZ data. The cost of properly maintaining the system is quite low, and AOL's spending on DMOZ seems to be even lower. So why shut it down? Had they wished to do so, they could have spun it of with Mozilla.

[lgn1]

Well its half way thru the day here on the east coast, and Zeal is still up, and allowing new members to signup.

Another 12 hours, and we will know if this was a hoax or not.

[educities]

lights turned off

zeal.looksmart.com/index.html

[RobinK]

It wasn't an April Fool's Day joke after all.

[LifeinAsia]

Shut down, yet the logo still says, "help build the best search"

[lgn1]

I don't know what Looksmarts Acroymn FURL stands for. But for all the hardworking Zealots, the FU portion is obvious.

[fischermx]

File URL.

[shabda]

soeone should start google bombing furl with the words wasters. no seriosly, wasting the efforts of so many zealots, i mean it sucks.

[flicker]

How sad. I spent a little time working on Zeal in its early days; it wasn't one of my favorite directories, but it didn't deserve to be left out with the trash, in my opinion.

[podman]

If is was an employee of LookSmart, I would check my contract to see if I get advance notice before I get fired. Might even start looking for a job now.

[lgn1]

Gee I wish I had the money to shutdown and throw away a PR8 site, without even trying to sell it.

[Rosalind]

Now I'm wondering whether they are going to sell their database to anyone. It has to be worth something, probably quite a lot to the right buyers. But within a year link rot will set in and its value will go right down.

[LizardGroupie]

This closure is a very good thing. It makes ODP more important than ever!

[Ivan_Bajlo]

When is Zeal domain expiration date? ;-)))