A while back Brendan posted an article on this blog about the Yellow Pages industry. As you might have deduced from that post, we’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how the reputation-building tools bundled in StepRep can be incorporated into existing online business directories.

If everything goes according to plan, soon customers and advertisers on local “StepRep-powered” Yellow Pages websites will have access to all the features that StepRep users already enjoy:

• Profile pages that display recommendations from customers instead of anonymous (and usually cranky) reviews.
• Search results organized by social context, so customers can see how they’re connected to local businesses through their friends and their friends’ friends.
• One-to-many communications enabling customers to pose an open question to an entire service category.
• Reputation monitoring for businesses to keep track of what their customers are saying about them on other sites.
• StepRep rewards, a success-based advertising model that incentivizes customers to recommend businesses to their friends.

The idea is to restore the Yellow Pages to what they were in the pre-Internet era – the first place you turn to when you need to find a local business. I drew a little comic strip that covers the basics. (Thanks to Tavis and Nicole for modelling for me.)