Whitepages (company)
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Type of site
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Directory |
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| Founded | 1997 |
| Headquarters | Seattle, Washington, US, US |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Founder(s) | Alex Algard |
| Key people | Rob Eleveld (CEO) |
| Products | People search, contact data, mobile apps |
| Revenue | $70 million (2015) |
| Employees | 120 (2016) |
| Website | www |
| Current status | Active |
Whitepages is a provider of online directory services, fraud screening and identity verification for businesses, public record background checks, and other products, based on its database of contact information for people and businesses. It has the largest database available of contact information on US residents.
Whitepages was founded in 1997 as a hobby for then-Stanford student Alex Algard. It was incorporated in 2000 and received $45 million in funding in 2005. Investors were later bought-out by Algard in 2013. From 2008 to 2013, Whitepages released several mobile apps, a re-design in 2009, the ability for consumers to control their contact information, and other features. From 2010 to 2016, the company shifted away from advertising revenue and began focusing more on selling business services and subscription products.
The idea for Whitepages was conceived by Alex Algard, while studying at Stanford in 1996. Algard was searching for a friend's contact information and the phone company gave him the wrong number. He thought of an online email directory as an easier to way to find people. Algard bought the Whitepages.com domain for nine hundred dollars, which he says was all of his savings at the time. He continued operating the website as a hobby while working as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs. He expanded the database of contact information using data licensed from American Business Information (now a part of Infogroup). Eventually WhitePages was producing more ad-revenue than Algard was earning at Goldman Sachs. In 1998, Algard left his job to focus on the website; he incorporated Whitepages in 2000.
The site grew and attracted more advertisers. The company brokered deals with Yellowpages and Superpages, whereby Whitepages earned revenue for sending them referral traffic. By 2005, $15 million in annual revenues was coming from these contracts. In 2003, Algard stepped down as CEO to focus on CarDomain.com, which he had also founded and Max Bardon took his place as CEO temporarily. In 2005, Technology Crossover Ventures and Providence Equity Partners invested $45 million in the company. That same year, MSN adopted Whitepages' directory data for its "Look it up" feature. Algard returned to the company in 2007. By the end of that year, the Whitepages database had grown to 180 million records and the company was listed as one of Deloitte's 500 fastest growing technology companies in North America three times. By 2008 the company had $66 million in annual revenues.
In 2008, Whitepages said it would start working on options for users to control their information on the site. That same year, it acquired developer Snapvine in order to add features where users could be called through the website without giving out their phone number. It also introduced an api, which gave third-party developers access to Whitepages' data. Whitepages released an iOS app that August, followed by the Whitepages Caller ID app for Android devices in February 2009 and for Blackberry that May.
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Wikipedia