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There used to be a thing called a phone book that would be placed on my door step (and my family doorstep as a kid). How about however that was funded just be d

• bigiain 5y ago
  Where I am, the "white pages" was paid for by the (single) phone company, who were incentivised to do that because there was no other readily available way for you to find the number you needed to call someone. Phones didn't store all your contact details and numbers. These were monetised by having phone owners call more other phones, hence spending more money with the telco than they would have otherwise. There was also the "pink pages" which was privately own4ed/run, which only listed businesses, and monetised by leaving your business out (often while lying to you about all your competitors paying for listings) or by offering larger ad spaces to paid listings with just basic names/address/phone number listings if you didn't pay. These were monetised as basic "pay to be listed" or freemium/promoted listings. Neither of those two business models survived the web and smart phones. These days 99.9+% of the numbers I call just come out of my contact list. I probably got those numbers by asking people, saving their caller id number when they called me, or I found it on their email sig or website. Neither of those two business models provide an obvious way to monetise people who say "I have this phone number, and I want to know who it is, but I don't want to call it up and ask (or I did that and they wouldn't tell me or I don't believe them)."