Authorities

If you look at communities of interest, anywhere, not just on the web, there will be a few authorities around which a given community orbits at a given time. e.g. a charismatic leader.

In the 60's, some communities oriented around Indian spiritualist leaders. The thinking of the time, and a widespread interest in eastern philosophy, made those people highly relevant to certain western communities.

Then, times changed.

New authorities, based on a number of factors, were chosen. People moved on. What seemed important in the past, was no longer.

You can see it on the web, too. Certain sites become the center of attention for a community, for a time, then something changes and people move on. I think it would be fair to say that the search engine marketing world has Danny Sullivan at the center. Danny is the main authority around which the community orients.

I'm interested in identifying those authorities. And keeping track of them. Looking at communities and seeing around which point they orient. Pick out those sites and add them to the directory, and not rely on passive submission to make that happen.

That would be valuable, would it not?

Rumours and gossip

There's a great thread over at cre8asite [cough] started by me about the thinking behind the directory.

I'm a great believer in a book called the Cluetrain Manifesto, which states that you should converse openly with your customers. This helps you build a better service. Helps you build effective relationships. Google get this (GoogleGuy). Microsoft get this (SearchChamps). Yahoo get this (YahooBlog).

A few little birds tell me that some, behind closed doors, have a few questions and are debating this directory. Great! Head on over to cre8asite, start a thread on their own site, get in contact with me, whatever. Glad to have a chat! Help me shape the service the way you want it. I'm here for the little guy - the webmaster. My door will always be open to you.

Let me be clear: We're building a bigger, better Open Directory. A semantic web adds value to the world. We've got a business model that will help make this happen.

That's our goal.

Add Url to Directory

Fairly self explainatory (hopefully). One question I've been getting is in regard to the top level categories. "Why can't I add a URL to these"?

These cats are locked for adding URL's because the topics are quite general. Conceivably, many sites could fall under the category, which would quickly become a mess. In order to keep the directory well ordered, please add a url to to a sub cat.

New Directory Beta Launches

Another directory? So what? The net is flooded with them.

Yes, that's true. However very, very few look after both the needs of the user, webmaster and the needs of the search engines.

That's where Rubberstamped comes in. We're building a credible directory that categorizes sites based on human review. The webmaster gains a credible listing and doesn't have to wait weeks or months for approval, like they do in many free-to-list directories. The major search engines can crawl and use our data. The users get unique, fresh content with emphasis placed on the user experience.

We realize that time is valuable, so we won't waste yours. We offer a two day turnaround on Add URL requests. Often a lot quicker :)

Let's face it - we're not competing with the major search engines. End users aren't going to switch to general directories en-masse to do their searching - that's what Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other major engines are for. Instead, we're building a credible, third-party link citation service for search engines, and other machine based retrieval systems, to utilize. We're building a directory based on usability principles to better serve the end user. We're doing our bit for the semantic web. We're identifying hubs and authorities within web communities using our own mix of machine and human selection methodology. All sites are reviewed by humans, the link describes *exactly* what a user can do on the target site, and the site has been verified as being intended for end users.

We're going to be advertising heavily in the new year. We're going to build the best service of its' kind.

Stay tuned...