With a newly formed digital team, Yellow Pages is pushing to deliver e-commerce, user-generated content and social media in its online properties. The company is also rebranding to simply “Yellow” in the process.
Yellow Pages Group is to deploy SAP’s NetWeaver platform, as it moves to fill the IT infrastructure vacuum left after its sale by Telecom last March.
The Yellow Pages is being rebuilt to deliver social networking features, including user-generated ratings for services and a Facebook-style portal.
Telecom confirmed today that it is selling the Yellow Pages Group for NZ$2.24 billion. The buyer is a private equity consortium consisting of CCMP Capital and Teachers’ Private Capital, the private investment arm of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
Telecom New Zealand reported an earnings increase for the quarter to September this year of 12.6% compared to the same period last year, bringing in $224 million as opposed to $199 million.
The Yellow Pages isn’t resting on its laurels following its recent re-launch. Despite seeing a 20% increase in usage, the Yellow Pages has launched its free online mapping service for businesses.
Yellow Pages is as perennial as the grass, it seems, and when Telecom launched its online version in 1997 it was lauded as being an important step forward for the brand.