Maybe I might say fly by night directories are dead but I won't entirely say directories are dead... The real directories, the ones that actually understood the meaning of running a directory like DMOZ, BOTW and a few others I won't bother to mention are definitely not dead.

They still make up for some very valuable links in any link profile in my honest opinion. They still work... Very well if I might add.

If you do want to run a directory and its niche specific and properly managed I think it's a swell idea if you have your marketing properly planned out.

Hope this helps.