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.”

Everybody knows that tomorow the zeal web directory will shut down for good. So what are the alternatives for editors of the “old” looksmart’s free web directory inclusions? It seems that some of the editors that worked for Zeal have 3 alternatives:
– First alternative is that they open a web directory with all the knowledge they know such as nesters who wrote that message on the “Zeal is dead” thread:

I might have known.. At least it is now confirmed, and there is no more wondering.

Sad but it was always going to happen.

It may be the wrong time and I know us zealots hate any type of spam but following on from some of my recent emails about Zeal not showing us the love; I am trying to do it better.. I am starting up a editors directory which will be done better… (thats the plan) feel free to pay me a visit or come and join at http://www.sahfor.com/ – by nesters

Sad comments:

Zeal appears to have a robots exclusion file on it to stop any robots crawling the categories, so the content of Zeal is not even archived on archive.org

If there are any categories that are of particular importance to you, get them saved now, somewhere, anywhere, but before March 28th.

To see all that data and hard work lost…words fail me. – by raznuk

– Second alternative is to become an ODP Editor and join the Open Directory project: http://dmoz.org

– Third alternative is what basically LS_LS say in his message: We think that avid Zeal users will appreciate the large, interesting and vital community at Furl.net (www.furl.net).

Tomorow Zeal Web Directory is past.~

It starts with: Dear Valued Zealots And Contributors,

We thank you all for being a part of the Zeal community and contributing your time and knowledge to the Directory. LookSmart has decided to focus internal resources on objectives that are more central to our business strategy and Zeal.com has been shut down. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you again for contributing to the Zeal community.

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

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

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

All that knowledge gathered arround by the smartest people and those who cared about seeing Zeal blooming, is wasted.