Here’s one more business the internet will kill off.
I got an interesting large envelope in the mail this week. On the outside of the envelope was a stamp “IMPORTANT”.
I opened the envelope to find a thin sheet of plastic with ads on it. I was confused as to what this was, until I read the accompanying letter.
“Enclosed is your complimentary phone book cover!”
Wow, it’s not every day that you get something for free. Especially something as useless as a phone book cover.
I honestly didn’t know such a product existed. But apparently phone book users like to use these covers to protect their phone books from coffee stains, food spills, and tears. Phone book covers slip nicely on the outside of a large metropolitan yellow pages and include ads for local businesses. The cover is the most expensive part of a phone book for ads, so advertisers on the plastic phone book cover usurp the directory company and the big ambulance chasing law firm that inevitably advertises on the back cover.
Needless to say, my cover is heading straight to the trash. Just like my delivery of two big yellow pages each year. (OK, I live in Austin so I actually recycle the phone books. I don’t want hate mail for saying I throw these things into the trash.)
I know one person who still uses the phone book. She happens to be my mom.
These days most people get what they need online. Search: Austin Plumber. Search: Austin Barnes & Noble. Search: Austin auto mechanic.
So you can add phone book covers to your list of businesses the internet killed off. If you even knew this business existed.
Scott Alliy says
Went to a wine dinner in Houston the other night and sat with a Cardialogist. Obviously an intelligent person and does visit news sites on the internet.
Interestingly him and his wife both spoke of the Doctors love of reading the paper along with his morning cup-o-jav. Reading yesterdays news when todays even up to the minute news is at your fingertips makes no sense to me but as they say “Old habits are hard to break”!
The new media has arrived and the days of the print are numbered. The ole Doc and others will either get on board or be left behind on the island of misfit toys LOL
Pete D says
You’re a tad late with this forecast. Yellow and white pages have been available on the web for nearly a decade. For over the past 5 years, most people I know including myself have thrown out the phone book the day it arrived.
The one sad thing, however, is that you still can’t opt out from receiving it. It seems that still for some time they’ll keep killing trees for no good reason.
owen frager says
and my mom, and their moms…
that’s why they call the advertisers “ma and pa” businesses
Andrew says
Pete – that’s why I saying this…the phone book has been dying for a while. With regards to opting out, I got so frustrated with receiving these phonebooks that last year I registered CANCELPHONEBOOKS.COM and PHONEBOOKOPTOUT.COM.
kenc says
The industry is dying??? I guess if you don’t count the 14 BILLION references those books got last year, you could say the $26 billion dollar industry with its low single digit growth rates is dying.
For the record the industry doesn’t knock down any trees for its paper!!! Let me repeat that – they don’t need to cut any trees for their paper supply. Currently, on average, most publishers are using about 40% recycled material (from the newspapers and magazines you are recycling curbside), and the other 60% comes from wood chips and waste products of the lumber industry. If you take a round tree and make square or rectangular lumber from it, you get plenty of chips and other waste. Those by-products make up the other 60% of the raw material needed.
jp says
Andrew,
Don’t throw it out yet!! Aside from being a domainer I run a Computer Service & Repair + IT Consulting company in San Diego. Online advertising for Computer Repair has proven nearly worthless for this 1 particular industry. Almost everyone calls me from the yellow pages. In fact I am the Biggest ad in my heading 🙂 (Which wasn’t cheap). Ponder this, the #1 thing that a caller says when we answer the phone is, “I actually called you from the print yellow pages, because my computer is broken and couldn’t look anything up online”! I do feel like computer repair may be the last stand for print advertising though. There are also alot of cases where their computer isn’t broken but their internet is down for whatever reason (Sometimes bad router, Access Point, or ISP Problem).
Anyway, I might want to advertise on these phonebook covers if the price is right, so if you could post the contact information for whoever mailed you that it would probably put more money in my pocket.
In general however you are all correct, print advertising is definitely a thing of the past.
Andrew says
JP – good point. If you’re computer isn’t working you can’t go online for help.
I suspect that problem will also go away some day. Many households have more than one computer. If the home internet goes down, most homes will eventually have a secondary internet connection (e.g. mobile broadband).
jp says
Did you happen to catch the name of the company that produces those covers. Its seriously worth at least looking into for me.
I hope you are right about people getting redundant computers and internet connections. It drives me nuts, every day I talk to at least 1 person who desperately wants to have their computer fixed, however they can’t stand to be without the computer for even 2 hours while its in for repair. Then I offer to sell them a cheapo spare/redundant computer for a few hundred dollars so they can have that in the mean time, and for the future, but of course they say they can’t justify the expense????
Andrew says
JP, it was called “Community Services of America”, but I don’t recall an address and there was no phone number.
Andrew says
JP – one other thought on your comment.
I bought a Sony Vaio a few months ago. For the most part it works well, but the mousepad goes opposite of the direction I move about 90% of the time. If I plug a mouse in through USB it works fine. Sony can’t resolve the problem over the phone, and told me I can send it in to San Diego to get it fixed — with a 10 day turnaround! There has to be a better way. Maybe I need to bring it into a local shop, but it kills me to pay someone to fix it when it’s still under warranty.
jp says
Haven’t heard of this problem before. My instinct tells me your touchpad is somehow in there backwards, but the thing is 10% of the time it works right.
I searched google for a while (which BTW is how we fix 99% of problems we dont’ already know how to fix) and found some interesting stuff.
#1, The only people that ever seem to have this problem are Sony Vaio owners
#2, see this link to a discussion thread, offering a few solutions that seemed to work. I am especially intrigued by the one involving electrical tape
http://www.techsupportforum.com/hardware-support/laptop-support/123442-solved-vaio-touchpad-reversed-3.html
#3, A link to the electrical tape fix. I don’t know if the laptop model in this fix is the same as yours but probably close enough. Apaprently the metal casing of the laptop is causing some sort of a short that does this.
http://doube.org/sztp.html
My instinct tells me to just replace the touchpad all together, but its worth trying these easy fixes first.
Andrew says
Hey, thanks! The other weird thing is it worked fine for the first month or two and then started gradually going opposite more often. I’ll check these links out.
John says
This is why I love.tel domains. Simple, easy to create a directory of local businesses and mobile ready. I don’t understand why people don’t create more directories using .tel domains.
Take a look at one I found http://www.Yaletown.tel . Very simple and informative and if you need to contact a business simply click on listed telephone number and it dials it for you it also has a map. I’m loving it. The best telephone directory there is