I went home on my lunch break and what did I find in the breezeway of my apartment building?  Phone books.  Gobs of phone books.  Two books in each bag, and a bag at every door.

Now, I have many issues with this, not the least of which is the fact that I can’t remember having ever asked to receive a new pair of phone books every year.  I know, I know… I work in the technology world and with search engines, so I have more impetus than the average person to completely eschew phone books. 

There isn’t a single thing the phone book can tell me that Google cannot in terms of my local search needs.  Google (and other online search engines) have officially carved a serious piece of the local search pie, which must have the phone book people scrambling for answers.  Kelsey Research even says that more than 50% of Google users have abandoned the phone book altogether, so I must not be alone in my dislike of them.  For me, phone books are just a waste of space…something else for me to find storage space for (and something else for me to throw away every time a new one is delivered to my door unrequested). 

This is basically real-world SPAM–unasked-for junk mail.  But it’s representative of the dwindling power of phone books.  They deliver them to me, unrequested, because they have to.  They have no other way to try and make me use it.  They also promise their advertisers that they’ll get their books in front of a certain number of eyes.  They promise their books have a large number of users, and then they achieve that number of users by putting phone books on every doorstep. 

What about people like me and the other Google users, who not only don’t use them, but get upset about it? 

I’m toying with the notion of simply leaving the books there and seeing how long they’ll stay there before someone else disposes of them for me.  I also toyed with finding someone I could complain to about this, but that would just be wasted breath, I’m afraid.

It reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer gets so fed up with all the Pottery Barn catelogs he gets that he decides to cut it off at the source:  the post office.  First, he bricks up the inside of his mailbox, but his mail just ends up in Jerry’s box.  So he wanders down to the local branch, where Newman works, and tries to “cancel the mail.”

Postal Employee: “May I help you?”
Kramer: “Yeah, I’d like to cancel my mail.”
Postal Employee: “Certainly. How long would you like us to hold it?”
Kramer: “Oh, no, no. I don’t think you get me. I want out, permanently.”
Newman: “I’ll handle this, Violet. Why don’t you take your three hour break?
Oh, calm down, everyone. No one’s cancelling any mail.”
Kramer: “Oh, yes, I am.”
Newman: “What about your bills?”
Kramer: “The bank can pay ‘em.”
Newman: “The bank. What about your cards and letters?”
Kramer: “E-mail, telephones, fax machines. Fedex, telex, telegrams,
holograms.”
Newman: “All right, it’s true! Of course nobody needs mail.” 

Funny stuff.

Speaking of that, there’s a new startup I should mention, called Earth Class Mail.  Like Kramer, they seek to help you end the viciuos cycle of mail.  Users create an account, and then have their mail forwarded to Earth Class.  They open the mail for you, scan it, and send it to you electronically.  So basically, instead of junk mail, you can get SPAM.  Hooray!  Same junk, different format.   They also shred it after forwarding, I’m told.  It costs a lot of money, certainly more than someone like Kramer could afford, but it might be in your price range.  And there’s no denying the appeal.  I presume you can tell them what kind of mail you have no need for, and eliminate it from what they forward on to you.

Much like a recent post I wrote about the dying business model of cable television, the phone books are going to go away… it’s an eventuality.  That’s why each of the books has their own website where you can search their listings for whatever phone number you want.  But the paper books are just outdated and sad.  Everything is going digital, and I’ll be happy when the day finally arrives that I no longer get unsolicited yellow pages left at my door.