Looksmart Shut Down The Zeal Web Directory

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That’s a terrible terrible news, the zeal.com web directory will shut down on march 28th 2006. It’s true. For some of us zeal was a reference and inspiration. It was the potential rival of the ODP!

All the members that worked freely for Zeal, added websites, corrected categories, took a lot of time performing themselves on that directory are invited to the ODP, Open directory project. Bad news for most of them…

I added 3 websites a week ago and their submission was pending, i guess i’ll never see them inside of zeal. It’s the same for some other website i submitted! But that’s not the problem…

their closure message was :

Dear Valued Zealots and Contributors,

Thank you for being a part of the Zeal community and contributing your time and knowledge to the Directory. After trying to put the deserved resources behind Zeal, we have made the conscious decision to shut down Zeal.com. On March 28, 2006 Zeal will no longer be available. We are not selling Zeal.com and have no future plans for it at this time.

We think that avid Zeal users will appreciate the large, interesting and vital community at Furl.net (www.furl.net). Furl is an online book marking service that helps you save information that’s important to you, share it with others and see what others are saving and find important.

With Furl you can:

* Save Web pages to a personal, permanent archive with 5GB of storage
* Revisit the full text of your favorite Web pages
* Share articles and information with friends and family members with simple email pass-along tools
* Use Furl as a platform for social networking and discovering useful information
* Share articles and information with people that share common interests using RSS feeds
* See what other Furl members are saving and sharing
* Save your favorite Zeal content

Whether you are browsing the Web, travel planning, recipe sharing, house hunting or researching, Furl is a wonderful tool. Join the thousands of people that are using Furl every day to find, save and share information that is important to them.


– Here is the link to the thread ( read it fast its going to be deleted on march 28 )
Zeal Close Thread by LS_LS

– Most of the members that replied to that thread think its a big joke and looksmart is kidding…. but fast they change their moods and some of them feel real bad about that:

“Hey that was a joke right? This guy is just an editor. How come he have this info?” by shabda

“I am so sorry Zeal is closing down. I used to edit here quite a lot and really resent all that work being binned.

ODP editors are very upset on your behalf and have expressed their condolences. A warm welcome awaits you at ODP. If you apply, do mention that you were a Zeal editor, it might help.

The editorial styles are very different, but you’ll soon get the hang of it. I am very willing to help any editors make the change.Search for editor name rzan if you want any help or advice.” by rzanuk

“At the very least they could have used an Editor that we all knew of and had had dealings with in the past. Everybody check back here on the 29th…” by Baronne_cynthia

“Wonder if The Internet Archive could keep the whole Zeal content.

Relly sad news Ls_Ls!

Regards,” by tramage

And it doesnt stop to that… more comments are in.
So some are happy to become ODP editors, others are… not feeling the same way.

Search engine watch creates an article about it also at Search engine watch zeal article

– On some forums people are expressing themselves about that:
V7N Forum Zeal Thread
Digital Point Zeal Thread
SEO Chat Zeal Thread – No comments yet, they didnt realize it 😉
WMW Zeal Thread

And a lot more…..

Now as shoemoney said on DP:

“When I was at pubcon someone asked Matt Cutts about directories and which ones he would submit to… he said dmoz botw zeal and yahoo. Now one of them is going.”

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