Phone Books

[csandste]

I get four or five phone books a year. Usually I just pick 'em up and throw them away unopened. One year I left a stack of them on my porch, thinking it might prove a deterrence, no luck. One year I took a quick look at cover advertisements, promising to have nothing to do with anyone that stupid-- most were slip and fall attorneys. One year I looked inside and found my name next to a house I'd moved out of more than a decade before and a landline number from the nineties.

Can anyone figure out the business plan for these things? Advertisers must be people who don't check their invoices or have the Internet? Maybe I should save one for when we have the cyber war.

Understanding why phone books exist and who makes money on them is beyond my grasp.

 

[ZeeOSix]

Originally Posted by csandste
One year I looked inside and found my name next to a house I'd moved out of more than a decade before and a landline number from the nineties.


At least the scammers won't have your correct number.

I use to get a bunch of phone books, but might get one instead of 4 a year now.

 

[02SE]

 

[Garak]

Here, they're still essentially provided by the telecom, actually a wholly owned branch of theirs. We did have at least one competing company years ago, but they didn't last. The big advertisers in the local phone book are sometimes still the same as they were 40 years ago, a certain fairly large local restaurant chain.

I don't think I've looked in the white pages for many years, but I do on occasion use the yellow pages and blue pages.

 

[dishdude]

What company would waste money on a yellow pages ad? They dropped a phone book in my driveway a couple weeks ago, it went right in the recycle bin.

 

[Dave9]

^ Many yellow pages do a combination listing, you pay for both the ad and their online database listing and the online version IS something a lot of people check instead of wading through the whole internet just to find a list of local companies doing a *thing*. So, it's not really a waste.

Plus, personally I like getting a big free flammable book. Part of one is in a bag in my vehicle cargo area, is great for starting campfires.

 

[Garak]

As Dave9 points out, that's somewhat what it's like here. In fact, if you go through the "yellow pages" online from this telco, and click on a company, you'll usually just get a PDF of the yellow page print ad. That's particularly handy for pizza and Chinese food.

 

[skyactiv]

They no longer pass out phone books where I live. When I got them, I shot .22LR rounds into them.
My dad is a retired attorney. He had his own law firm and said a full page ad in the Yellow pages was like $40K a year. He had a smaller listing instead.
That was before the internet and smartphones made phone books useless to the majority of the population.

 

[Chris142]

Originally Posted by dishdude
What company would waste money on a yellow pages ad? They dropped a phone book in my driveway a couple weeks ago, it went right in the recycle bin.

We stopped advertising in them at my work. The sales people still call us and try to sell us advertising. We did a questionnaire at work and nobody found us in a book. All online or word of mouth.

 

[maxdustington]

They really are useless, I haven't seen one in years. Google pretty much turned them into Sears.
From what I understand, their just another marketing company than markets your business info to other marketing companies so they can call you non stop to market your business info to other marketing companies. That's what my boss told me, anyway.

 

[Kira]

To csandstc: Thanks for the "short range trip down memory lane".

It's been 4 years since I saw a load of Manhattan phone books lying essentially untouched in the lobby of my brother's building.

Now you got me wondering about phone books......I'm going to ask around to see if they're still made.

BEST PHONE BOOK AWARD: Goes to a privately made phone book published for businesses and people around Lake Champlain.
The lake is bounded by New York State on the west and Vermont to the east.
The book had "two front covers". You turned it over so you only read the right hand page. The left hand page was the other state and up-side-down.
Handiest reference book ever made.

 

[csandste]

Think I actually get or got five phone books-- thought I might have been exaggerating in my OP

The western part of my county has been from ConTel to GTE to Verizon to Century Link for POTS.

CenturyLink puts out a phone book, but so does Verizon even though they got out of the landline business.
The Original Yellow Pages
The Yellow Book
AT&T has POTS in the eastern part of the county and blankets the area with their phone book.

That's five.

There's a company called Mast which published (and probably still does) phone books. I remember them because they butchered branch library listings in the phone book in the early eighties forcing the purchase of large display ads in order to have some kind of listing. After about four years I decided to go to their office to have it out. They wouldn't let me in and as I was standing around one of their employees dressed in shorts and t-shirt came through a panel in the wall. I got back into the bowels of the phone book industry where I wasn't supposed to be. As I was yelling and screaming at them their only question was "how'd you get in here?" Things were better after that but they went for decades and screwed something up every year.

I thought I'd try to find something for Mast Publishing and it appears they have a website with nothing on it except their address (looked at this on my phone and computer, maybe there's something that doesn't load on Chrome, but it's fitting, somehow that they'd have a totally useless website since they publish totally useless products.

http://www.mastpublishing.com/

Wasn't capitalism supposed to put institutions like these out of their misery?

 

[Kira]

I went to their website. It looks like they hustle specific market listings and appear to locate clients' businesses on maps such that GPS links to them.

Their "phone book" division is a vestige of the past.

How 'bout the outer space noise when you roll over topics on the website? cutting edge, eh?

 

[maxdustington]

Originally Posted by Kira
Their "phone book" division is a vestige of the past.
Not until all the baby boomers are dead. My mom still watches TV with our equivalent of a TV Guide and does the crossword puzzles in the newspaper. I rarely watch TV or read the paper.

 

[csandste]

Originally Posted by maxdustington
Originally Posted by Kira
Their "phone book" division is a vestige of the past.
Not until all the baby boomers are dead. My mom still watches TV with our equivalent of a TV Guide and does the crossword puzzles in the newspaper. I rarely watch TV or read the paper.


I'm too old to be a baby boomer, by eleven months.

Cut cable and satellite. Have about a dozen devices hooked to my wi-fi. Got rid of all newsprint.

Hold on to a lot of old Windows computers by converting them to Linux, but tons of Chromebooks, Rokus, smart speakers, readers, tablets and a drawer full of smartphones, none of them expensive.

I'm happy to ditch the eighties. Gimme more technology. I want flash memory installed in my brain

 

[csandste]

Originally Posted by Kira
I went to their website. It looks like they hustle specific market listings and appear to locate clients' businesses on maps such that GPS links to them.

Their "phone book" division is a vestige of the past.

How 'bout the outer space noise when you roll over topics on the website? cutting edge, eh?


Maybe I have to use a different browser 'cause all I see is dark blue boxes and their street address.

(looked at it with Brave-- must be a bunch of Adobe/shockwave plug-ins that Chrome doesn't support)