New Zealand Post is setting up a new service in Auckland which it hopes will become a first port of call for anyone wanting to find information on businesses, services and community events within their local area.
Some are seeing the new service as
New Zealand Post is setting up a new service in Auckland which it hopes will become a first port of call for anyone wanting to find information on businesses, services and community events within their local area.
Some are seeing the new service as a competitor to the financially distressed Yellow Pages Group - itself already under siege from Google.
The state-owned company's new venture is called Localist and is being chaired by former Kiwibank chief executive Sam Knowles.
The aim was to take the best traditional directories had to offer, adding in social media, Mr Knowles said in a statement today.
Small businesses found it hard to make sense of digital and social media, and paid too much for basic advertising services.
"It's simply not true that current online search engines and directories have it all covered when it comes to finding truly local information. The content has to exist before it can be found," Mr Knowles said.
Localist, which would be launched next year, was part of a plan New Zealand Post had been working on to extend its communications expertise into new media.
A standard online listing would be free of charge, while a range of advertising options would be available.
The information provided by Localist today included a question and answer sheet, in which the venture raised the issue of why another directory was being launched when "Yellow Pages is struggling".
Localist said businesses and consumers in Auckland had told it there was a need for better information services at a local level.
Late last month, Yellow Pages Group said a process to consider offers to buy the company had been stopped, with stakeholders' expectations of value unlikely to be met in the market for now.
The group's banking syndicate would look to complete already advanced plans to restructure the group debt and intended to take a long term view as owners of the business.
Yellow Pages was bought by Hong Kong-based Unitas Capital and Canada's Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan for $2.24 billion in March 2007.
Beyond its $1.6 billion dollar debt burden, Yellow has struggled to get its basic database function properly, or at least to match features, such as real-time search, that are now old-hat elsewhere.
In its efforts to match or beat Yellow, NZ Post may be able to leverage its minority interest in New Zealand's largest IT services company, Datacom.
