WhitePages.com Blog - Part Deaux

Ok, it’s a New Year and we’d like to officially welcome you to the WhitePages.com (WP) blog. Can’t say that we’ve been overly diligent in maintaining our blog over the past year, but with each new year comes new resolutions…and firing up this thing is at the top of our list (behind growing our user base, increasing revenue, driving engagement, releasing new products, etc., etc.).

So why the renewed interest in a WP blog…haven’t blogs hit the proverbial media hype already? Well…yeah, they have. I can’t tell you how many times in the last year I’ve heard panelists and speakers exclaim that a good blog strategy is the key to business success. Yeah, right! And being the cool kid in high school always leads to a prosperous business career. Anyway, while we don’t see blogging as the driver of our overall biz success, we do see it as a great tool for communicating, networking and sharing ideas with employees, customers, partners, analysts, press and anybody else interested in engaging in thought-provoking conversations…or not.

What are we going to share in this blog? Well…the sky’s the limit…so to speak. I’d like to be able to tell you exactly what we’re going to discuss in this blog, but truth of the matter is that I really have no idea. I do know that we’ll be blogging regularly, that we’ll be highlighting some of the different issues and opportunities in the People Search space and that we’ll be giving our readers some pretty extraordinary insights on how we’re taking this company to the next level of growth. Beyond those general ideas, we’re looking to our readers to help us define our content moving forward.

Contributors to this blog will come from all over the company. In fact, we may actually have a guest blogger or two depending on the topic. We’ll definitely facilitate ideas and content from clients, analysts, gurus, readers and wherever else we find interesting ideas…just no telling what we may end up talking aobut.

And if you’ve made it this far, you can check out some of my ‘blog’ work that focused on MouseDriver and get a feel for how the WP blog will read. Can’t say that this blog will lead to the same success as The MouseDriver Insider, but you never know. We’ve got some pretty big aspirations for the WhitePages.com blog

Hope to see you joining the ride.

John Lusk
VP, Marketing

Posted by John Lusk on January 2, 2008 – 5:02 pm in New at WhitePages.com | 0 Comments

The blogosphere beckons!

Check it out this story in The Galveston Daily News. “Well traveled pooches owners sought” is the title of an article that very clearly demonstrates one of the Whitepages.com user scenarios that we’ve identified. Granted, this article hasn’t yet ended in your typically happy ‘pet’ ending, but at least it shows that individuals are using the site to help connect lost pets with their rightful owners. Nothing like a feel-good (or hopefully soon-to-be) feel good story to close out the year.

Also, when you get chance, make sure you read Vanessa Fox’s’ post on Search Engine Land. We typically don’t get tons of play in the blogosphere, so it’s great to see others recognizing how our future direction may impact internet users and their ability to access and/or control their online information. It’s a great article that references and even cooler research report that PEW/Internet released yesterday. Lots of good points brought up in both the article and the survey and certainly worthy of continued discussions.

Comments, questions, criticisms? Let us know.

Posted by John Lusk on December 18, 2007 – 9:24 pm in News | 0 Comments

Now with 80% People Coverage!

Yes, that’s right. With 180 million people in our database, we now cover 80% of all US adults. Given that we started 2007 at just 40% coverage, which is where the rest of the directory assistance industry is at, the team here feels real good about ending the year with this milestone. After all, we have doubled the size of our database in just under a year.

What’s the significance of this? On most other directory assistance-like websites (as well as calling 411 directory assistance), you have approximately a 4-out-of-10 chance to find the person you’re searching for, whereas on our websites, you now have an 8-out-of-10 chance. That’s quite a different user experience. Looking at this milestone more broadly, this marks the first time ever that you can find 80% of the US adult population in a free, easily accessible service. Yet another perspective… compare us to some of the other leading online repositories of people data:

people search database size

To be fair, this chart is not an apples-to-apples comparison, nor do we want want it to be an apples-to-apples comparison. After all, we are quite happy to differentiate in the sense that:

  1. We provide instant gratification to our users who seek contact info (rather than first having to become “friends”).
  2. We are free (unlike pay-per-lookup or subscription-based sites).
  3. We have better coverage (as is evident from the chart above after all). Why? We aggregate data from multiple sources, including offline.
  4. We serve a simple use case: finding and connecting people with each other. No fuss.

What do you think of the various improvements we have launched recently?

Posted by Alex on December 11, 2007 – 9:50 am in News | 0 Comments

Improved Search Forms

And here is another website enhancement launching in time for the Holidays… We just added new persistent search forms at the top of all our search results (as well as the “not found” pages). This will make it easier for you modify your searches on our site, which will benefit all users (in particular those of you who are power users). We have also improved the user interface for our search suggestions, which you’ll notice throughout the website as you conduct searches.

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

persistent search forms

Posted by Alex on November 16, 2007 – 4:55 pm in News, New Products | 1 Comment

Makeover for WhitePages.com

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?

Posted by Alex on November 9, 2007 – 5:45 pm in News, New Products | 0 Comments

Now Mapping Your Multiple Results

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.

Posted by David on October 5, 2007 – 9:27 am in New Products | 2 Comments

Alex Chats With Vator.tv

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.

Posted by Tiffany on October 3, 2007 – 3:23 pm in News, Video | 0 Comments

Entrepreneurial Lessons From Alex

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

Posted by Tiffany on October 3, 2007 – 3:22 pm in News, Video | 0 Comments

More people and more info!

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!

Posted by Alex on August 23, 2007 – 8:53 pm in News | 0 Comments

Waiting for iPhone

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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?

Posted by Scott R. on June 29, 2007 – 3:35 pm in News | 0 Comments