Among the US yellow pages publishers Superpages has been out in front with new products and performance-based advertising. Chris Smith, who used to work for the company, counts the ways in which it is the “most Web 2.0” among the IYP sites in his opinion:
Of all the top online yellow pages and local search sites, I believe that Superpages may now have the distinction of having the greatest variety of Web 2.0 features. Out of Local.com, DexKnows, Yellowpages.com, YellowBook, Citysearch, and Google Maps — none of them have photos + ratings/reviews + “blogs” + user-provided profile data. Only Yahoo Local really approaches this number of user-content features, I believe. Out of all of the top IYP and local search sites, only Yahoo Local and Superpages openly invite any users to supply photos for locations — Google Maps only allows business owners and content partners to supply photos.
The company is pushing the boundaries of what I like to call “the product definition.” And what’s quite interesting to me is how Marketing VP Robyn Rose says of Superpages that it’s “a local search site with roots in yellow pages.” What’s being set up in a certain way is the battle of the product vs. the brand: Superpages, with its evolving product and YellowPages.com, with its very strong brand identification with the traditional product (or the “metaphor” of yellow pages at least).
Screenwerk 
November 16, 2007 at 9:10 pm
First to have a user-photos feature is a dubious distinction, however I can’t help but point out that Yelp appears to be the first. According to the Internet Archive it looks like we had it in early 2005…
http://web.archive.org/web/20050803024649/http://www.yelp.com/
Yahoo added a similar feature in late 2006
http://ylocalblog.com/blog/2006/09/14/your-local-tags-collections-photos/
Superpages late 2007
http://digital50.com/news/items/BW/2001/07/14/20071105005102/superpages-com-expands-user-generated-content-functionality.html
The real question of course is do people contribute in a meaningful way?
November 17, 2007 at 12:16 am
Has this guy had his head in the sand for the past three years? I’m not going to name anyone outright, but I’ll give you a clue as to who is the real emerging leader and 2.0 innovator in local search:
*rhymes with “help”
November 17, 2007 at 12:19 am
Your email address says it all 🙂
To consumers this notion of “Web 2.0” is totally meaningless. All that matters is that the site works and delivers helpful information
November 17, 2007 at 1:57 am
I threw in my standard calling card, Greg. Truthfully, I was a bit surprised that you didn’t say something yourself…
November 19, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Like I said over on Chris’s blog, I think this is more Web 1.9 than Web 2.0, Greg. Having siloed user-generated content is not really facilitating community and community is what I think is at the heart of Web 2.0. I just can’t see Idearc putting together any kind of service that let’s people interact with one another through their site. Can’t see how the brand could support it. Still, they have come a long way. Not that that was hard.