[Research] - Was/Is the Internet Yellow Pages a thing?

Cantido

I had an idea for a course wide project on a theoretical IT project that would combine Trip Advisor with the granularity of the Yellow Pages, with a mobile application that would let users walk the streets with their camera open and spot restaurants, stores and business venues of any kind depending on their GPS location combined with what the camera spots and who is paying for advertising. I got the idea from walking the streets of Tokyo and Seoul, wondering how all those businesses get their face out when they're stacked on top of each other (a good thing I wish America would implement.)

Its all strictly theoretical, and it already exists in bits and pieces. Trip Advisor is really nice, and Google Maps already spots restaurants and attaches business reviews and metadata to map search results. But I'm struggling to find already existing counterparts to what I envision. I read somewhere that the Internet Yellow Pages is real, and unsuccessful, but I tried looking for scholarly (or not) articles on what it is and why this is the case. Has anyone heard of such efforts existing?

Zilla360

yell.com exists in the UK. Are you describing some kind of augmented reality city-guide app? I'm sure I've seen some media coverage of something like that in the past.

bsjezz

i remember there was an internet white pages (residential listings mostly) way back in the day, but i assumed it was removed because the data could be easily used to reverse-search phone numbers for sensitive info

in any event, the yellow pages also required registration, it wasn't a magic list of literally every business - it was a fat book, for a book, but i bet if you printed Yelp it'd be a fat book too

Nobody

Yellowbook.com still exists, doesn't require registration, and tied in with google maps to show you where a business is/was located.

Dexknows is also still a live site which has similar functionality, and there are a couple of others too.

Most people just rely on google these days though.

Veevee

Cantido wrote: »

I had an idea for a course wide project on a theoretical IT project that would combine Trip Advisor with the granularity of the Yellow Pages, with a mobile application that would let users walk the streets with their camera open and spot restaurants, stores and business venues of any kind depending on their GPS location combined with what the camera spots and who is paying for advertising.

Yelp's iOS and Android apps do this, and I've seen a few others do it as well.