Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 14:37:15 -0800
From: staff@newhoo.com (Rich Skrenta, NewHoo)
To: corbet@eklektix.com
Subject: Announcement: NewHoo to become directory.mozilla.org!

Dear NewHoo editors,

We have some really exciting news to announce -- NewHoo has joined
Netscape, and will be moving to http://directory.mozilla.org/

We're happy to say that Netscape shares our vision of an open,
community-built web directory.

NewHoo was approached by several web portals who discussed possible
partnerships or acquisitions.  But we had the best feeling about
Netscape -- they were very enthusiastic about our vision to build
the biggest directory on the web, and NewHoo's community-editing
approach fits well with their pioneering efforts to support the
free software movement through Mozilla.org.

The details:

     o  NewHoo.com will move (largely unchanged) to
        http://directory.mozilla.org/

     o  The directory will be more open than before.  In the spirit of
        open development, and fitting with the Mozilla ideals, we are
        creating a free use license to allow individuals and organizations
        to take advantage of and use copies of the directory that they can
        crawl, archive and reuse on their machines.  The ability to do
        this was one of the key reasons for us to go with Netscape.

     o  Netscape will make use of Open Directory data in their Netcenter
        web portal, but directory.mozilla.org will remain a separate site.

     o  The additional resources of Netscape will allow us to better
        address bugs, support and new features.

     o  With Netscape's backing, NewHoo will advance to being a premier
        web directory and search destination, visited by millions of
        users worldwide.

NewHoo has been struggling against the titans of the search engine space,
but, thanks to the editors, has achieved great success despite very modest
resources.  We recently crossed 100,000 sites in the directory.  It is our
goal to expand the Open Directory to be the best and largest human-edited
web directory, and we firmly believe that the open editorial model is
the only indexing method which can possibly scale to the size of the web.

We strongly believe this is a positive move for NewHoo, the editors,
and the site.  Partnering with a company with the stature of Netscape
means increased stability, traffic and recognition.  We will have the
time and resources to properly address support, performance and new
feature issues.

If you have any concerns about the change, please let us know at
staff@newhoo.com and we will try to personally answer every email
(although please be patient, as we will probably have quite a few
messages to respond to).

Thanks,

-- Rich Skrenta & Bob Truel
   NewHoo