Medical Categories Slowly Moving Online

For traditional yellow pages companies, Doctors, Dentists and related categories are huge revenue generators. Online, though, they've been very slow to adopt (as with Real Estate, which we discussed yesterday). Several companies have tried different approaches to bring these categories online, like HealthGrades and several competitors, which offer reviews of medical professionals. Looks like there's another new site moving into this space, called ZocDoc, which has information on doctors, the insurance they accept and allows you to schedule appointments. Like many Local startups, I suspect this one is going to run into a Sales issue, with doctors being very busy people and their front offices not really being equipped to spend their marketing money. Like all categories, this one will eventually be fully engaged online, but for the time being, I think the YPs, IYPs and Google will be the primary resources they'll use.

ZocDoc Gets $3M to Help You Find a Doctor

Barrons Promotes RH Donnelly as "Risky, But Attractive"

RHD's stock is up 14% at the moment based mostly on an article in Barron's which indicates that, despite the 97% drop in stock price in the last year, RHD's directories are still experiencing strong usage in some sectors and are "far from dead". The albatross, as they say, is the $9.7B of net debt the companies holds. But, as they say, if you're looking for a high-risk, potential high-return stock, RHD may be one to check out. This article made me wonder if they feel the same about Idearc, but they didn't really say here.

Flashing Yellow, With Lots of Green - Barrons.com

Should consumers be able to opt out of phone book deliveries?

Don't know how I missed this yesterday and is was on one of my favorite blogs, The Consumerist. It discusses attempts by some local governments to allow their residents to opt out of receiving phone books and the difficulties that previous governments have had in passing such laws.

It really seems like allowing people to opt out shouldnt negatively impact business much if advertisers are looking at their ads based on performance instead of on circulation. In fact, it could reduce costs for yellow pages companies (though it would require them to keep a database of who has opted in/out). However, there may be more impact than we would think.

Are there a lot of people who would opt out but end up keeping the phone books they are delivered and using them? I have heard the argument that phone books have the benefit of being able to find things faster than you can online and perhaps, if a pipe has burst or you have to do something really quickly, where you aren't familiar with a vendor, people still grab for Old Faithful. In any case, if you look at the comments on this article (which is read by some of the more tech-savvy people around) there is still a fair amount of support for the books, and people still see value in them.

Phone Books: Should Consumers Be Able To Opt-Out Of Phone Book Deliveries?