The User-Friendly Phone Book launched its first phone book in 1999, in the Gulf Coast region of Louisiana and Texas, as the User-Friendly Yellow Pages. At that time, the book was published under the auspices of the Cameron Telephone Company, a privately owned family business that began in 1928 to serve the burgeoning oil industry in Louisiana. As the telephone industry grew over the decades, Cameron published and distributed its phone directories wherever it provided telecommunications services.

Cameron’s directory publishing business for both yellow page business and electronic media advertising flourished over 40 years. By the mid-1990s, John Henning, the company’s president, conceived the “User-Friendly” concept for the business (yellow-page) directories and expanded regional coverage even further with the help of Bruce Howard, now User-Friendly Phone Book’s CEO, who joined Cameron Publishing in 1999.

In November 2003, Cameron Communications spun off its successful directory publishing business, User-Friendly Phone Book. Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a traditionally media industry-focused financial institution, stepped in and took a major interest in the company. As a result, User-Friendly is now a portfolio company of VS&A Communications Partners III, LP, the private equity affiliate of media industry merchant bank Veronis Suhler Stevenson, www.vss.com.