The Internet opened a new era in the history of the access and circulation of the information. The on-line digital medium became an interactive library of civilization, a generous and attractive playground for thoughts and ideas.



In the latest years every Internet user got a more active role. The social networking and the content sharing sites brought a new level of interactivity and opened new and new horizons for the regular surfer in terms of communication possibilities.

Before talking about the on-line medium as a medium which facilitates the communication we'll have to agree upon the fact that, primarily, each internet user is an information consumer. What does this mean? This means that before communication takes place there's a process of informing about such opportunities and possibilities.

All on-line journey starts with information consuming. There's one question which will have to be answered: where from should we collect the information? One of the most used method is the use of search engines. Another possibility [among many others] is to visit a web directory and to use it as a starting point.

What is a web directory? A web directory is a collection of links to other sites, listed in categories and subcategories. The newest "child" of the web directory is the bid directory. They are web directories with the working principle as follows: the ranking in the directory is directly proportional to the contribution of the submitter. This generates a tendency to pay high and get a high position in the list, from the part of the submitter.

Where does this new ranking method lead? It is not surprising, I think that a considerable part - maybe the main part - of bid directories have gambling links in their top 10, which are listed on their home pages. This is happening because of the following reasons:

1. finding quality external links is a challenge for the web masters, so they are interested in buying almost any link that can be bought and they love the permissive bid directories,

2. majority bid directory owners are interested in immediate profit, so they list gambling sites without being interested in the quality of their directories' content.

Having these links and, consequently, concluding that their content is not family-friendly, the question is: what is the role of such a bid directory in the general economy of the internet? They fail in being a family-friendly resource center, so they fail in being trustworthy and high quality information points. That is a fact. Most of the bid directories which are listing links to gambling site won't have long life as they will never earn credibility, respect and honourable reputation.