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>As a result of Zeal's merger with LookSmart, your contributions to the Zeal directory can now be seen by millions of Web users, on partner sites of LookSmart such as Microsoft's MSN, Excite, AltaVista, and hundreds of Internet service providers.
LOL! You only sorta beat me to it. :)
While we all realized that it was bound to happen -- common sense told us so -- they were officially denying it, or at best deflecting the question.
I interviewed two different VPs in December, and both said that there were no plans. One denied it outright and the other deflected it by talking about their "team of roving editors" who took care of non-commercial listings.
As far as I know, this is the first official word from LookSmart that they were going to use the data. Or did you beat me to that somewhere? :)
Sometimes engines provide their listings to partners via a XML feed, other times a monthly database 'dump' is what the partner finds more suitable ... for the Zeal listings to appear in all partners it has to be in both, and I can't envisage an easy way of separating them right now without requiring the partners to do (unpaid) extra work.
If I was running Looksmart then I'd have gone the route of the old Snap/NBCi Live Directory, with a paid directory (Looksmart) and another separate directory (Zeal) from which top performing (highly rated/clicked) sites can be promoted into the main Looksmart directory...
Instead, I think Looksmart are simply using Zeal in lieu of the phantom 'roving editors' that previously seemed to be made up of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. ;)
Ammon Johns
Perhaps some of the more regular visitors to Zeal could tell me when the format changed. Any idea whether my former Zeal listings are liable to return or whether they have permanently been dropped from the DB.
As a sidenote, Zeal editors are not currently able to log in (presumably until after the launch), and all editor stats appear to be zeroed out.
There was mention of new guidelines, which I imagine will reflect the fact that LS will be disseminating the information.
What's more, everything I have added over the last few months (OK, not a lot, but some stuff) seems to have disappeared. Could in fact be everything I have added since L$ took control of Zeal.
I dount that 'merger' will be the right name for it!
Ammon Johns
Looking more closely, skibum, this looks exactly what may have happened. It certainly holds true for me.
If this is generally true, it is a great 'thank you' to those editors who voluntarily put a great deal of effort in... it would certainly explain why there is so little comment from them!
Precisely.
What a shame. Like goguides - all the work appears to have gone down the toilet.
It was there very recently so the changes have just occurred.
Notice the:
COMMERCIAL CATEGORY
NONCOMMERCIAL CATEGORY
PAID LISTING
UNPAID LISTING
For another thread: It makes one seriously re-consider the value in becoming an editor to have the work, at a later date, simply removed.
Mark, it looks like this happened over the weekend, it was either Sunday night or Monday morning that I visited since Friday - I did 15 submissions early last week and had hoped to get in before the "change" occurred. If I'm not mistaken it was somewhere here at WmW about a fortnight or less back that there was a "sniff in the wind".
Needless to say the subs aren't in and login access is denied.
The main thing for me right now is that only the Home>United States> categories are easily available. The only way to get to the UK categories is to search for something listed in them and navigate from there.
Ammon
Back in December when I realised the LS/Zeal merger(?) could be a really good thing we began a campaign of site adding.
Got v excited to see this email mentioning "visible on partner sites". But again we wait and see how the cards are delt. I will still be expecting to see preference given to those who have payed.
Such is life (from the French..)
