Digital Disruption Continues in the Traditional Print Market - Philip Voice
- 25 July 2013
For some people it seemed like a moment that wasn't possible and would never come. Hibu - formerly Yell and owner of the Yellow Pages brand - looks like it's finally run out of steam under the pressure of its debt pile. The once mighty Yell brand was worth, at its height, some £7billion.
Those of us who pre-date the internet will remember how dominant Yell was. The Yellow Pages directory could be found next to most people's telephone and if vandals hadn't set it alight, a copy of the Yellow Pages could be found in a good old red telephone box (another victim of technology disruption: but that's another story).
I love this quote from The Media Briefing website:
"Without wanting to oversimplify this conundrum, these days even JR Hartley would have just Googled it and bought it from Amazon."
Search engines and online information remain a disruptive challenge for all printed publications. It is printed trade publications that are especially vulnerable.
I've always maintained that Yell (sorry I can't bring myself to call it Hibu) will jettison its printed media completely, default on its debt and return as a pure digital play.
Tomorrow we may find that Yell's battle weary shareholders have lost out as the company hands control to its creditors.
If there is a debt for equity swap as rumoured then that might be the time to watch a relatively small Hibu - in terms of market share - become a moderate success.
Personally I think Hibu will then be sold to venture capitalists or absorbed into another content/B2B player.
One thing is for sure, Yell is completely dead now.
After starting my garden maintenance and landscaping business in 1984 and running it for 21 years I decided I needed a change of direction (probably a mid life crisis, no seriously! :-0) Together with my family, wife Donna, Son Henry and Daughter Fleur (not forgetting Hector the Black Labrador) I moved to France in search of an old farmhouse to renovate. In the interim period whilst waiting for the contract to go through I started writing a blog. Initially just to keep a diary for family and friends to keep up with our progress if they wished but then it occurred to me that there isn't a real time watcher of the landscape industry in the UK. I didn't want to waste my experience and experiences so I decided I could put all of this Juice to good use so I started Landscape Juice.