I agree the YP industry is dying, but that is happening regardless. I doubt YP print is losing market share to print papers, and I'd like to see sources showing that newspaper websites are taking share from yp.com ... my guess is that they're both losing market share to Google, Yahoo!, AOL, and (soon) mobile ad networks.
Pretend you're a local locksmith in a town of 10k, or an auto mechanic, or hair dresser. You're been paying the Yellow Pages $199/mo for 20 years but less and less people are coming in from that ad. Now, you have two options: one, do you go with Google or Facebook, or YP.com, or some other company probably from "California" that you just don't trust; or two, go with your local newspaper who has a very similar product and who you've done business with your entire life?
These people are our customers. I've actually heard folks say "I don't trust those California people"--wrap your mind around that and get back to me.
The truth is that by partnering with newspapers Seeing Interactive has a potential sales force of 30,000 trusted-local reps. Even if the newspaper industry is dying--which is a ridiculous claim--we still have the feet on the street and technology today to sell markets that Yelp or Google will never reach.
I like that angle. I too figured that there's one thing that web SaaS can't really effectively replace well: feet on the street, and people interacting with other people they trust in 'meatspace'.
Yellow Pages (the print publication) is dying. The market is undoubtedly going to shrink as it goes online. The question (this is why this disruption is so interesting right now) is who will capture the bulk of this opportunity?
Seeing Interactive would argue that newspapers are actually in the best position to capture this new revenue. They just need to take advantage of the opportunity.
