[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4cast #405: Goodbye, Yahoo Directory

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OPLIN 4Cast

OPLIN 4cast #405: Goodbye, Yahoo Directory
October 1st, 2014

Yahoo logoLast Friday, in a progress report 
<http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/98474044364/progress-report-continued-product-focus> 
on "Product Focus," Yahoo included three sentences announcing that "our 
business has evolved and at the end of 2014 (December 31), we will 
retire the Yahoo Directory." While this is not surprising news - some of 
you youngsters may not even know what the Yahoo Directory is - it caught 
our attention because the original OPLIN website 
<http://oplin.org/content/oplin-website-through-years> from mid-1996 to 
early 1999 was basically a collection of "link directories" (or "web 
directories") similar to the Yahoo Directory. Before the founding of 
Google in 1998, link directories were the way people found things on the 
Internet. Librarians spent a lot of time building link directories and 
posting them on the Internet because that's what librarians do; they 
help people find information. So in a way, the end of the Yahoo link 
directory is the end of one chapter in the history of the Internet that 
included a significant role for librarians.

  * Yahoo! is scuttling the only thing we knew them from
    <http://uproxx.com/gammasquad/2014/09/yahoo-closing-yahoo-web-directory/>
    (UPROXX | Bea Kaye) "If you're like me, then you had no idea that
    Yahoo! was actually an acronym. In 1994, Stanford students Jerry
    Yang and David Filo created a comprehensive web directory. At first
    they named it 'Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web', but
    shortly changed it to 'Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.'
    (If you are under the age of 20: Search engines sucked in the '90s.
    Web directories like Yahoo were where it was at.)"
  * The Yahoo Directory - once the Internet's most important search
    engine - is to close
    <http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-directory-close-204370> (Search
    Engine Land | Danny Sullivan) "A 'directory' relies on humans to
    review websites, summarize them with short descriptions and organize
    them into a categories. When Yahoo started, this system was
    effective, because there weren't that many pages on the web
    (relatively speaking) and automated search technology to organize
    websites wasn't very good."
  * End of an era: Yahoo Directory to shut down Dec. 31
    <http://www.besttechie.com/2014/09/27/end-of-an-era-yahoo-directory-to-shut-down-dec-31/>
    (Best Techie | Shawn Farner) "For a long time, the Directory was a
    big part of Yahoo's business. That all changed when automated
    crawlers began indexing websites, and Yahoo partnered with several
    companies (including Google) to provide search results that weren't
    compiled by humans. The Directory still existed, but it just wasn't
    as important as it was in Yahoo's heyday - the early-to-late '90s."
  * Yahoo will ring in the new year by killing its website directory
    <http://www.pcworld.com/article/2688492/yahoo-will-ring-in-the-new-year-by-killing-its-website-directory.html>
    (PCWorld | Zach Miners) "Yahoo is also not the company it used to
    be. Since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO in 2012, she's engineered a
    number of acquisitions and launched new products and apps, like
    digital video and online magazines, aimed at making Yahoo more
    relevant. But still, some things must go."

*/Before the Ohio Web Library <http://ohioweblibrary.org>:/*

Below is a link directory of "Electronic Resources" from the original 
OPLIN website. link directory 
<http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/linkdirectory.png>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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