Dmoz, one of the longest-running directories on the Internet will close on 14 March 2017. Directory Listings played a huge role in the early days of the Internet, especially if it was done by companies or online volunteers.
These directories were needed because initially search engines were not as efficient as they are today. For example Dmoz predates Google. At the same time, Netscape had as its main rival the program browsing Internet Explorer. Let's mention that Opera has been around since then.
So then, in the "stone" age of the internet, they used directories to find interesting websites, and they considered it much better than using a machine search.
Webmasters of course used (and still use) directories as a way to promote their websites. Of course there was a lot of abuse of it services, especially when the automated directories were released, which displayed any web page, without any control by a human agent.
Famous directories were Dmoz or Yahoo Directory.
Links in these directories could guarantee not only a steady stream of visitors to the site but also a very powerful backlink that added more credibility to the site in search engines.
The announcement published by Dmoz does not mention the reasons for terminating the service.
Dmoz belongs to AOL, and the decision to close the site should have come from AOL.
The site as mentioned above at the beginning of the publication will stop running on 14 March 2017.
Note that from March 14th onwards, the NOODP meta tag will no longer be needed, as it was needed to prevent search engines from using Results search the description of the site where the Dmoz was.