Comparing PublicIdentity.org with the yellow pages

In the days before the internet, we used phone books to find the phone number of someone we wanted to call. The phone books were divided into two sections: white pages, with an alphabetical list of every number, and yellow pages with business numbers grouped by category.

Advantages

• The list included every phone number for the given area.
• Opt-out was monetized: you could pay for an unlisted number.
• There wasn’t any advertising, but you could pay to have your name in bold.

Disadvantages

• Each phone book only included numbers for a given area.
• Areas with a lot of people had huge phonebooks.
• Areas with a lot of people has a lot of duplicate names. They used address to help disambiguate, which is not currently desirable from a privacy standpoint.
• It was run by the phone company and only included people with phones.

Notes

This is directly comparable to what I want to build. I wouldn’t monetize opt-out, maybe I could charge for a bold listing.

• In the United Statues, the term “yellow pages” is generic and not trademarked. The Thryv (owners of the yellowpages.com](https://www.yellowpages. com/) domain) has the trademark on “The Real Yellow Pages”.