A VC« Comment Of The Day | Main | I Just Did It »
What A Waste
Yesterday morning I walked out my front door to find six copies of the Verizon Yellow Pages sitting on the stoop. Ugh. We haven't used the Yellow Pages in ten years and every year I have to throw them out.
Why would anyone want a huge paper directory when the web is so much better? And I don't even use the Yellow Pages on the web. Google and Yahoo! work just fine for me.
So I decided that this year I would figure out how to make these dead tree space wasters stop showing up. On the books was the URL www.directorystore.com. So I started there. Lot's of options to request yellow pages but nothing to stop them from coming.
In the FAQs, I found a number 1-888-BOOKS-65 that I can call M-F from 8am to 8pm and hopefully that will do the trick. I guess it makes sense that the ultimate analog property requires an analog communication to turn it off.
Later yesterday afternoon, after I had calmed down about all the trees getting killed by Verizon and their comrades, I saw this scene on Broadway and 10th Street. I guess yesterday was Yellow Page day in my neighborhood. What a waste.
Comments (14) | | TrackBack (1)
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b2c969e200e550368bde8834
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference What A Waste:
» Yellow Pages, part 2 from Web X.0
Last week I wrote about Artifacts from the past - Yellow Pages on dead trees. I guess I wasn't the only one who noticed this stupid/ridiculous/outrageous waste of paper...: Fred Wilson tried to get Verizon to stop sending him the [Read More]
Tracked on May 8, 2006 11:09:34 AM
Posted May 7, 2006 in Venture Capital and TechnologyComments
And just remember that when Verizon et al tries to sell advertising, all SIX copies of your will be counted in the circulation numbers...separately!
Posted by: erin | May 7, 2006 10:28:35 AM
A couple months ago I counted 91 books in the basement of our office building, just because I was curious. As a commenter above noted, there's no tracking system differentiating readership from circulation, so they just keep piling up. I think we've still got four on our porch from last fall (I live in a two-apartment house).
Posted by: Jack Phelps | May 7, 2006 12:04:33 PM
It's not a waste... for Verizon is a profit center. That's why you can't unsubscribe easily: people still use Yellow Pages, or at least the companies that advertise there still believe they do, and the phone companies turn a profit on the product.
Expect them to stop showing up at your door when they will become a loss maker for the telephone company... it's just nothing more than market economy at work, really.
Plus, my mother still uses them when she wants to find a repairmen, a restaurant etc... so you shouldn't think that no one has a use for them. For sure, the highest value segment will always use the Net for that, but you're not in the majority yet, methinks.
Posted by: Giordano | May 7, 2006 12:56:41 PM
On this account I couldn't agree more - what a waste indeed. The net can save trees - it's killing music, but it can save natural resources.
Posted by: jackson | May 7, 2006 1:07:53 PM
Marshall Brain:
"It's so sad when you think about it. There's the $1 billion dollars wasted printing them. There's the 1.5 billion pounds of paper -- untold square miles of forest. There's the millions of gallons of gasoline spent transporting and delivering them. All of that wasted because they could be delivered electronically in one way or another with very little cost and very little environmental impact."
http://sadtech.blogspot.com/2005/02/phone-books.html
http://sadtech.blogspot.com/2005/03/phone-books-again.html
Posted by: Dimitar Vesselinov | May 7, 2006 5:49:21 PM
I was at an local search conference a few years ago and one of the Internet Yellow Pages companies had a wonderful commercial on this topic. The first shot was a teenager going to a drive-in or something in the 1950's, followed by a shot of the same man in the 1960's, the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, etc. In one of the scenes, it showed him using the yellow pages to look something up. Anyway, the last scene was the same man--now old--needing information on something. So a girl about 8, presumably his grand daughter, goes and gets the yellow pages only she doesn't open the yellow pages, she puts it on a chair in front of the computer and sits on it so she can reach the key board and proceeds to find the needed information on the Internet!!!!! It was a very funny and clever commercial which really captured the technological obsolescence of the yellow pages. That said, yellow pages are extremely profitable businesses so I doubt that they will go away anytime soon.
Posted by: Simon | May 7, 2006 7:12:47 PM
Coming into the Silicon Valley recently via the 17, I saw a whole set of Yellow Pages along the side of the mountain road. I also found a stack of them on top of the mailboxes. All wet. This was before it FINALLY stopped raining this year in Silicon Valley. The Yellow Pages are not only wasting alot of money on printing they are extorting money out of local businesses for a product that does not work. I think that is going to end over the next 5 years..
http://www.merchantcircle.com/corporate/blog/2006/04/yellow-pages-and-wasting-local.html#links
Posted by: Ben | May 8, 2006 3:36:20 AM
Just chuck 'em in the recycling bin.
Posted by: Erin | May 8, 2006 1:36:19 PM
Yellow pages are a $19B market in the US, sold largely on vanity. The pitch is simple, you're a successful business, you deserve a half-page ad in the XX million copies we distribute. Unless the advertiser sets-up a separate phone number for tracking purposes, there is no way to quantify the ROI on that investment. The yellow pages jumped on pay-per-call but with the phone number right there online, who wants to speak into their computer mic, when they can grab the phone? The yellow pages need to mechanism to tie their online properties to their offline influence. In the meantime, Fred, you have a very successful business, you deserve a full-page ad in the next yellow pages :)
Posted by: Mike | May 8, 2006 7:27:08 PM
The Yellow Pages is akin to the Mafia and protection racket. The most recent Soprano's had a great story line about Jamba Juice and Starbucks, I think Tony sounded like a Yellow Pages salesperson in it.
Posted by: Ben | May 11, 2006 12:19:23 AM
We can do more than just talk about it:
Go to www.PaperlessPetition.org to request that your
name and address be removed from the Yellow Pages
printed directory mailing list.
http://www.PaperlessPetition.org/
Scrap the Phonebook.
The Yellow Pages industry dropped 540 million printed
directories this year. That's more than one per person.
With the Internet available literally in our hands, is
this acceptable? In addition to its cumbersome format,
the Yellow Pages is only accurate for a limited time, and
its production destroys the Earth's endangered forests.
Like the printed encyclopedia, the obsolescence of the
printed Yellow Pages is inevitable. However, considering
that in the U.S., 97% of this $14 billion industry is
derived from their print division alone, these mammoth
media dinosaurs will hold on for as long as possible.
PaperlessPetition.org will expedite an end to this
needless environmental waste, educate consumers on
free and easy alternatives, and shed light on the
growing inaccuracy of readership statistics that drive
advertisers to still invest in this antiquated medium.
Go to www.PaperlessPetition.org to request that your
name and address be removed from the Yellow Pages
printed directory mailing list.
We all appreciate your support, and please remember to
spread the word.
http://www.paperlesspetition.org/spreadtheword.php
Best wishes for a better tomorrow,
Ian Klein
PaperlessPetition.org
ian@paperlesspetition.org
http://www.PaperlessPetition.org/
Yellow Pages Paperless Petition
& Official Opt-Out Registry
Posted by: Ian | May 18, 2006 9:55:00 AM
Aside from search engines like google and yahoo there are other great forms of directories out there to obtain the same and most often better information than the yellowpages could ever hope to offer. http://www.Cuisineclicks.com is a great website for finding restaurants anywhere in the united states for example. It's sad to see that so many trees are killed each year because of a useless form of advertising...
Posted by: greenlivin | Jan 6, 2008 2:47:07 PM
I have an AC business and have been using the yellow pages for the last 2 years and it has been the only advertising that has been able to produce a return for me. I started out with a half page ad and have increased my ads to full page in the three books in my service area with the new discounts I was able to get I pay less than 1500 per month for the coverage and one new install pays the investment off each month and I get almost all my new customers out of the yellow pages I'm so glad I was able to take these ads out my first year or I might not still be in business. The Yellow Pages Verzion in general has been great and I will continue to advertise in the directories as long as I'm in the business since my ROI is so huge and the distribution is so high that I don't forsee the book to stop making my business sick returns. I would recommend any Business have a presence in the book.
Posted by: jonsacbus | Feb 5, 2008 5:40:02 PM
There is now a much easier way to stop receiving the Yellow Pages!!
Visit this new site, www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org, to opt-out of receiving the Yellow and White Pages. The amount of waste, in both time and resources associated with the costs of producing and recycling these books is staggering! This is the first electronic site which lets you opt-out and then AUTOMATICALLY contacts your phone book provider and lets them know you would like to opt-out.
We at www.YellowPagesGoesGreen,org understand that some individuals would still like to receive the Yellow/White pages, and for that reason we are not trying to STOP the books- just end their UNSOLICITED delivery. If we want a phonebook, we will ask for one.
www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org is working with local governments nationally to develop programs and enact regulations aimed at curbing the unsolicited delivery of these wasteful books. Stop receiving the books today!
Phil Cantwell
Founder, www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org
pc@yellowpagesgoesgreen.org
Posted by: PC | Apr 9, 2008 2:24:26 PM
Main RSS Feed of All Posts
VC and Technology Posts Only
