

How Telephone Directories Transformed America - coderdude
http://reason.com/archives/2010/10/28/by-the-book

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te0006
Ah telephone directories, the Google of the past era. They even evolved
archaic forms of SEO based on the alphabetic ordering of entries: Here in
Germany, we have several regional franchise chains in the emergency lock and
key service "industry", with names like "A.A.A. SERVICE" and even "A.A.A.A.A.A
GmbH". Register your entire company under a silly name and one of the top
entries in the yellow pages is yours, no extra advertising cost.

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tjic
I've got a friend who worked for a while, last year, selling yellow page ads
to businesses.

I was baffled.

Does anyone still use the yellow pages?

Well, I do.

SmartFlix.com has the ground floor of a two story building, and every year,
the yellow pages folks leave four or five shrink-wrapped bundles of
directories in our lobby.

NONE of these get opened up.

NOONE in the building wants even a single copy.

I usually take an entire shrink-wrapped bundle home, and use it to start fires
with all winter long.

~~~
parenthesis
I'm writing this comment on a laptop elevated to a better eye level by four
Yellow Pages.

