Life@ Category

A picture of my favorite New Year’s resolution!

My name is Darren, I work in the marketing department here at WhitePages.com and wanted to follow John’s lead and share some of the links we pass around inside the office. I’ve written before about our Names.WhitePages.com section and while we can come up with entertaining ways to use this data, the picture below really does tell a thousand words.

New Year's ResolutionAt a glance, the image is a nice shot of an old notebook page with names and numbers. But behind the picture is the best New Year’s Resolution I’ve ever heard — made even more impressive because the author actually followed through with it.

Here is the accompanying story:

About four years ago on new years day my mom was contemplating life, thinking of how she wanted to start the year off. so she sat down and made a list of words. words like love, peace, hope. and then she opened up the phone book and looked for people that had these words for last names.

yes, you guessed it. she called them. each and every person on her list, and said, “Mr. hope?, you don’t know me, but i just wanted to wish you a happy new year and that i want my year to be filled with hope, and that yours may be too”.

to which mr. hope said a confused thanks. and on down the list she went. and now, four years later, she pulls out the list every january 1st. and wouldnt you know it, most of them are waiting for her call. she has even visited a an elderly lady from the list. they tell her that they always wonder if this will be the year she doesnt call. and she tells them she cant imagine stopping.

I can only think of one way she could have made this better: by picking a few names that might need that pick-me-up a little more than the “Joys,” “Happys” and “Hopes.” Maybe throw in a Mr. “Sad” (49), Mrs. “Bummer” (48), Mr. “Doom” (280), or Ms. “Pain” (172).

That image made me smile today – great picture and an even greater story. It would be awesome if this turns into a fad – so if you want to join in, be sure to use our Names.WhitePages.com section to help you fill out your “Resolution Phone List.” What a great way to start off the new year. Put a smile on a few random faces and make some new “friends” — something we can never have enough of. Get out there and meet a Joy to world!

2007 Best Companies to Work For

We attended the prestigious “100 Best Companies to Work For” awards yesterday evening, hosted by Washington CEO Magazine. We did not win, but we were delighted to be there as a Top 100 finalist. Let me provide some background…

Last year, we applied and failed to make the final cut into a highly competitive field of top 100 employers. So during this past March, after a particularly challenging time for the company, we were understandably not overly optimistic about our chances. In fact, our greater concern was not about achieving finalist status, but rather whether our staff might think that the leadership was in la-la-land applying for an award like this, which required our staff to fill out detailed satisfaction surveys. In the end, we still decided to apply, not necessarily to qualify as a top 100 finalist, but because we figured that at very least we would obtain some free and valuable employee survey data to help us manage the company as well as possible for the rest of the year. At all times, we were pretty much resigned to receiving some very tough survey feedback and had no designs on winning.

So it was a huge surprise when we learned that this year, during what was one of our darkest periods after the layoff, we made the cut as a finalist company. Woo hoo! Who would ever have expected that? What a resilient culture we have at WhitePages.com. Thanks to everyone on the team for making this such a great place! We may do better in the future, but I will always remember our strong showing this year given the unique circumstances.

WA CEO Magazine - Best Companies to Work For WA CEO Magazine - Best Companies to Work For

The Love Boat


The Fremont Solstice Parade and the WhitePages.com Annual Cruise. Two signs that summer is finally here. Well sort of. Around here “summer” doesn’t actually start for a few more weeks.

While we’re certainly not a company that needs an excuse to throw a party, the quickly approaching end to the second quarter of the year conveniently gives us an opportunity to eat, drink, gamble and mingle with our “people search minded” friends and colleagues.

You would think four hours on a boat would be more than enough time to party, but you would be wrong. This is WhitePages.com after all, and once the boat docked the party spilled over onto the patio of the nearby Red Robin. By all accounts the party lasted another four hours. It would seem we just can’t get enough of eachother. Can you feel the love?

Happy 10th Birthday to Us!

Today we celebrated our 10th birthday (one of several celebrations we have planned). It’s pretty amazing how quickly time has gone by. It doesn’t feel like we are an “old” company by any means, although by Internet standards, 10 years is an eternity. Rather, it feels to me like we have retained the energy, fun, dynamism, and rapid growth of a small agile company — I hope that we can preserve that as we continue to grow. Hence, we have decided that we are celebrating being “10 years young”. After all, we have so much more to do as WhitePages.com enters adolescence! With that said, for taking us this far during our first 10 years of life, thank you to our great staff and users!

(Please sign our virtual bday card and post a comment below!)

captain contacts
Max high-fives our super hero, Captain Contact, as the latter bursts out of our bday cake.
staff
Our awesome Team WhitePages.com.
cupcake
The celebration continues at my desk

Bowling with the WhitePages.com Team

We all recently took the afternoon off to go bowling. It’s amusing to see what the WhitePages.com staff is capable of when they let loose. Michael T. started things off with an amazing acrobatic maneuver that went something like this… release bowling ball, follow through with both feet straight up in the air, land on head, thunk!

Michael T