Ok, it's not exactly about link development but close enough. I have written a post quite recently at my blog about it here. Basically I am starting to believe that most of us are looking for the wrong links and confusing relevancy with similarity when it comes to link building for directories. Please share your comments on my post. Also a quite old blog post(about a year old) I found interesting and is somewhat related can be found here
You touched a soft spot, the big problem directories in general are targeting submission traffic that’s what brings the money on the short term, and not targeting visitors. At my own directory I try to deep link build with regular sites that offer both visitors traffic and relevancy. Off curse is a more daunting task than just buy listings at other directories. Cheers, keep the good thoughts and ideas flowing
Very good points, a lot of these cookie-cutter directories pass way under the radar of the general surfing public. This is especially true of many general directories.