Matt Collins

Brownbook – a Crowdsourced Yellow Pages

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by

Matt Collins
in

I just came across these guys: http://www.brownbook.net/

They’re a sort of open yellow pages where anyone can add, edit or review businesses. This is very similar to what sites like WeLoveLocal and Yelp are already doing, but in a world where many small business owners have yet to really get to grips with online marketing, the analogy with something as familiar as the yellow pages could still be powerful.

BrownBook’s listings are currently mainly for the UK, but they are accepting entries from other parts of the world. Their revenue model is based on charging business owners to ‘claim’ their businesses. Looks like an interesting idea.

Comments

3 responses to “Brownbook – a Crowdsourced Yellow Pages”

  1. Dave avatar
    Dave

    Hi Matt, just for the avoidance of doubt, “Yellow Pages” is a trademarked term here in the UK, and for that reason we’d never describe ourselves as a Yellow Pages.
    Small point but legally important (my guess is that most consumers don’t give a damn about the TM and they regard it as a generic term, but not as far as the big YELL is concerned. But thats only my guess).
    What do other think: do consumers treat it as a generic term???

  2. » Developers use our OpenSearch API to deliver local business search and listings on your website Brownbook

    […] This means you can add your own search to your website and receive a set of results in a feed that you can format to display any way you like, for example to match your website’s look and feel. Here’s an example of a simple implementation by LocalMouth.  This was done in (literally) a few minutes.  Read their blog here. […]

  3. dave avatar
    dave

    now 27m records in US, CA, AU, CA and 240 other countries :)

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