DMOZ: will BOTW buy the open directory project?
Is the open directory on the open market? Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney fame says that the rumor of this monster directory deal was the hot topic at a convention he attended last week.
“At SES San Jose a couple weeks ago there were rumors floating around about Best Of The Web purchasing DMOZ from AOL. I am very good friends with the owners of BOTW and when I asked them during that time they told me “officially” they had no comment.“
So what does this mean to you and me, should the deal go down? Probably nothing to the average webmaster, except for a possible fee for inclusion in the open directory. Could it happen? Could there be an “expedited review” fee in the future for DMOZ?
Further, will Google continue to use DMOZ data for it’s web directory? Currently, Google Directory is a carbon copy of the open directory project. So will it change if BOTW becomes the proud new owner?
There are a lot of maybes here, the primary being that AOL has not confirmed that a deal is in the works. If a deal does go through, the next hurdle will be what BOTW decides to do with DMOZ. Google has been very vocal about how it feels when it comes to paid inclusion directories.
But BOTW has been passed over by Google’s wrath to date. Even though they do charge for their submissions, they state that paying the submission fee does not guarantee a listing in their directory. Which seems to have placated Google. At least for now. BOTW has been able to maintain good PR on it’s site, even deep into the category pages.
Will the same hold true for DMOZ if it becomes more of a commercial directory?
Time will tell.
My biggest concern is that a real web asset might be forever changed. DMOZ was built on an IDEA. It’s basically the cornerstone of the open source community. To see the volunteer reviewers go the wayside and become a completely commercial website would be sad.
So if BOTW does in fact snap up DMOZ, I hope they keep the initial spirit that the site was founded on in tact.
I guess we’ll see. It’s just a rumor now. And we all know how rumors can be….
What are your thoughts?
Tags: BOTW, DMOZ, open directory project, rumors, web directories
September 16th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
STUMBLED!
Could be a great merger.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:38 am
I hope they buy it and charge a small fee for inclusion. At least that way, it might not take 8 months to get a site included.
Right now DMOZ is worthless. I don’t even submit sites there anymore because I don’t feel like checking back to see if it has been included or not for 8 months.
September 17th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Yes, it could be a good thing if people could actually start getting listed there on a regular basis. The corruption at DMOZ may go deeper than anyone can imagine, and the listings seem to include the editors pages primarily.
But honestly, I think this whole thing might just be a sham. Does BOTW have the cash to buy DMOZ? Dunno.
But I do know that Shoemoney is gaining a lot from this. Could it just be supercharged link bait? Maybe a giant plug from Shoemoney for BOTW?
???
September 20th, 2008 at 6:56 am
Kind of off topic, but still relating to DMOZ.
For several years I’ve felt that DMOZ submissions were a waste of time. Interestingly enough, this morning I was checking the stats for Business Blogs and noticed that we have some traffic trickling in from the Open Directory….
Yes, this site did get listed by one of the reviewers there.
Not sure if it will help any other companies get listed with DMOZ or not, but here’s what I did that seemed to work. I submitted the site once a month for the last three months. Each month I drilled down into the directory as much as possible looking for the uber most relevant category I could find.
Which ultimately resulted in Business Blogs being listed in the category for search engine optimization firms.
You can see our listing via this link:
SEO Firms in DMOZ
I’m not sure how much weight a listing has these days, but I’m going to monitor it as much as possible and I’ll post a new article with the results, if any, at a later date.