Who are you? Name, age, location.

My name is Eric and I have a partner – Simon.  I am in the US and Simon is in the UK

What made you start your directory project?

A couple years ago I ran www.phynder.com – it is still around, but Google has pretty much relegated it to obscurity.  It had a good run, but I realized with the search engine oligopoly that we have – and Google’s virtual dominance – that any ONE directory is going to be subject to the whims of the top three engines.  Perhaps it would be better to distribute a directory across multiple domains and class C IP addresses.  Let’s go one step further and allow people to create descriptions of their web site that includes deep links into their material.

Technically, we are not talking about a directory – perhaps the Un-Directory or distributed directory – but not a classic directory. For more info come visit the site at www.oioreviews.com

What we ended up with is a network of blogs that we can post customer created content or have writers develop custom content about a site.  Right now we have 16 blogs and we continue to grow every week.

How much of your day/week do you spend on this product?

We are still in the formative stages and only recently started getting customers, but Simon and I put in a lot of hours per day trying to get things right.  We are still trying to figure out what people need, so much of the time is in creative brainstorming about new services.  We also welcome new ideas from customers.

What else do you do?

I am a data mining consultant and do a lot of programming.  Simon is a student studying law.

How long has the project been going for?

I think the project as we know it now – as it has evolved quite a bit – had been going for about two months now.

Were did the idea come from?

Well, it is many different ideas and most of those have evolved over the past several months, but I think the primary emphasis for this project came from lessons learned with Phynder.  Putting ones’ eggs in one basket is very risky, so having some type of distributed process makes much more sense.

Were do you see directory software going in the future?

Honestly, I am not certain about the software – I think it is more about how the business model changes.  For a little while back a year ago, it seemed that Google was dropping all directories from the index.  After a brief flurry of activity, it seemed that they pulled back those efforts and directories have continued to flourish since then.  In fact, it seems even more directories are being created now than when Phynder started – and I thought the market was saturated then!

Anything you would like to talk about in your professional career before starting on this project?

Luckily, in my work in data mining – structured data in databases – I had the opportunity to work with some really smart people in the natural language processing (NLP) field.  From that experience I have a better understanding of what is “easy” and what is “difficult” for Google and the other engines to do.

In your opinion what makes for a good directory?

I hate to be superficial about this, but PageRank, traffic and search engine friendly links.

In your opinion what makes for a bad directory?

Redirects for links and little to no traffic.

What do you think of the other software choices out there?

We are using WordPress blog software for our Un-Directory, so I don’t think directory software needs to be “directory” specific – it is limited to the imagination of the developer.

Were do you see directories going in the future?

The directory owners have to give their customers much more for the money.  One link crowded in with 20 other competitors is not a great value.  I think they need to break out of the “links on a page” mentality and start thinking about giving the customer more space to describe their offering and to link into important parts of their site.  I think we will see more importance put on deep links in the near future!

How do you see Search engines treating directories now, and in the future?

I have to admit – I am a little surprised about how WELL search engines are treating directories now.  Honestly, I am not sure that they will be treated this well in the future.  They are easy to detect and to remove from the index – that is what I thought happened with Phynder, but it is difficult to tell exactly what happened there.  To all the directories out there – start moving away from the same directory structure that Yahoo created over ten years ago!

What is your favourite directory?

I don’t know if I have a favourite, but I will tell you the best new idea in directories (other than our own concept!) is http://www.deeplylinked.com/ which allows people to add links to their inner pages.  Since most directories will only link to your home page – this is a major step forward.

Who would you like to see interviewed by thedirectoryblog.

I think the owner of deeplylinked would be an excellent interview – he seems to be ahead of the curve!

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