Makeover for WhitePages.com

Posted by Alex on November 9, 2007 – 5:45 pm in New Products, News

We have several exciting launches in store during the coming month just in time for the Holidays. Yesterday evening, we kicked things off with a complete makeover of WhitePages.com. As you can see, the website is a whole lot leaner and cleaner in appearance. But the site also works a heck of a lot better. For example, work listing and age info stands out visually much better now than before (screenshot below). And it’s easier to tell apart home listings from work listings with the new color coded icons.

multi results listing

Our “Listing Details” page now features well-integrated maps that appear right on that page without unnecessary additional clicks to view the maps.

listing detail page

How do you like these improvements? What can we do better for you?

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Now Mapping Your Multiple Results

Posted by David on October 5, 2007 – 9:27 am in New Products

We just launched a new feature to our People Search functionality that allows those of us that are more visually oriented to find the ‘right’ person on WhitePages.com’s Multiple Results pages. Simply click on the new ‘Map View’ tab from our Multiple Results pages to see all the results plotted at once against our new Virtual Earth maps, including road, aerial or hybrid views. In addition, this feature is also helpful in our Find Neighbors search, which allows you to look up and down your street to find your neighbors.

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Alex Chats With Vator.tv

Posted by Tiffany on October 3, 2007 – 3:23 pm in News, Video

In this interview, Alex Algard, the CEO of WhitePages.com, explains how the site has evolved from a directory assistance site to a broader people search engine, with an expected 160 million people on the site by the end of this year. Alex gives his take on how the WhitePages.com network is different from other competing online directories and how the site’s features provide users with the possibility to discover relevant information beyond mere contact info. Alex elaborates on the company’s advertising driven business model, which between the company’s various web properties (including 411.com) is projected to generate $70 million in revenue this year. Alex also touches on the role of social networks for people to stay in touch with their friends, as well as the notion of consumer privacy as the Internet is expanding the boundaries of the public and the private domain.

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Entrepreneurial Lessons From Alex

Posted by Tiffany on October 3, 2007 – 3:22 pm in News, Video

Alex Algard, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year recipient shares a few tips for aspiring entrepreneurs.

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More people and more info!

Posted by Alex on August 23, 2007 – 8:53 pm in News

A big portion of our team has worked over the past few weeks/months on website improvements that went live earlier today. We now have 128 million U.S. people in our database, which represents 57 percent of the US adult population. This is the only place on the web where you can look up 128 million people conveniently and for free (most of our direct competitors are right around 90 million people).

crowd

We also added age information on most of the people in our database, which is particularly helpful to quickly narrow a search down to the right individual when you retrieve multiple search results. Try a search for “John Smith” in any city, and you’ll see what I mean. To protect people’s privacy, we have gone a step above and beyond standard practice, and substituted specific birth years for 5-year ranges.

And in addition to all that, we also added a whole slew of other feature improvements today that we are very excited about. I will spare you of those details on this blog. You will just simply notice a better general search experience when you visit our sites. Take our word for it!

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Waiting for iPhone

Posted by Scott R. on June 29, 2007 – 3:35 pm in News

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We’ve had a countdown going on in the WhitePages Engineering & Operations group for a few weeks. First day of summer? A big release? Naaah. It’s the launch of the iPhone, and our resident obsessive Jack Valko is on the case.

Jack’s our Director of IT Operations, and he arrived at the AT&T store a few blocks from our office at 5:15 a.m. this morning. The Seattle Times writes about him here, saying that he “is claiming to be first in line…”

Leave it to the WhitePages blog to fact check it for you - pictures don’t lie: this is Jack at the head of the line. Behind him is a sign he made announcing the “Unofficial iPhone Waiting Line” and name-checking his blog at Waiting For iPhone, where he has more pictures and stories about the day.

Jack first promised to bring iPhones back for all of us, but as that might not happen, we’ll be satisfied with a company wide mail announcing full iPhone support from our IT Department on Monday. What do you say, Jack?

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2007 Best Companies to Work For

Posted by Alex on June 29, 2007 – 8:34 am in Life@, News

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

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The Love Boat

Posted by Tiffany on June 21, 2007 – 11:27 am in Life@


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?

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Playing the Name Game

Posted by Tiffany on May 23, 2007 – 1:36 pm in News

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette…

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

If you’re intrigued by names and especially wonder how many folks share your same first and last name in the United States — or in Pennsylvania — check out a new White Pages site, names.whitepages.com.

Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger is truly unique, as is Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, as they are the only ones in the United States bearing their names, at least according to the site that’s based on phone book listings.

Penguins player Sidney Crosby, on the other hand, `has a name twin in Bay Springs, Miss., and Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato’s name twin lives in Modesto, Calif.

Actor Brad Pitt not only can be found in California, but there are two in Utah, two in Virginia, one in Illinois and one in Hawaii. And fans of President George Bush can find 142 twins scattered across the country, with Florida hosting the most (17) and Pennsylvania sporting 10.

You can also find out the most popular names in each state. For Pennsylvania (because most families are listed under a man’s name) the most popular first names are John, Robert, James, William, Michael, David, Joseph, Richard, Thomas and Charles. And for last names, they’re Smith, Miller, Brown, Williams, Johnson, Jones, Martin, Davis, Thomas and Snyder.

– Virginia Linn, Post-Gazette lifestyle editor

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At-Work Contact Info!

Posted by Alex on May 22, 2007 – 11:19 am in News

We have done a soft launch of at-work contact info. That’s right, you can now look up the at-work contact info (address/phone/email) for approx. 8 million people. Over the coming weeks, we’ll add this info for up to another 13 million people, so our total at-work database might be up to 21 million people. (That’s a lot of people by the way… as many as all of Australia!)

Why am I excited about this? Here are some other reasons:
I can now reach people at work. Especially for my professional contacts, I dread calling them at home, but sometimes I only have their home number. Our research indicates that twice as many people prefer to call their professional contacts at work rather than at home (37% vs. 19%).

Regardless of where I prefer to call a person, sometimes I just simply must reach a certain individual right away. I can soon reach another 20 million Americans 9am-5pm, Mon-Fri, via WhitePages.com.

This represents a big quantum leap ahead of the competition for WhitePages.com. With the other projects in the pipeline, we hope to provide many more firsts for our site users in 2007.

Stay tuned for more!

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