I have been watching the directory industry explode within the past year and have been noticing a startling problem: Lack of Originality.

As I have watched the directory industry grow, a large amount of free templates, scripts, and category dumps have been available to webmasters which they have been using, and frankly now overusing.

To combat this uniformity movement, I would like to call for a change:

I would like to challenge directory owners (new & old) to redesign or restructure your directory to make it unique to your directory and your directory only. Whether it is changing of css on your existing template or designing of a new template, this change, I believe, will strengthen this industry and give yourself a new brand to build on.

In rewarding this change: I will offer free, permanent links on my blog to every owner who shows a sufficient change to the appearance of their site. Also, I plan to report of these changes through blog posting and I hope other directory owners will endorse this change as well (PM me if you are willing to donate to this cause).

In any case, I hope this gets the attention of directory owners and makes a positive difference.

Thanks