Hibu Inc. (styled hibü), formerly Yellowbook Inc., is a provider of digital marketing and advertising solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses across the US. Hibu’s specialties includes web development and hosting, digital listings and reputation management, search engine and social media marketing, and digital advertisements. Hibu is headquartered in Cedar Rapids, IA. History 1930–2001 Originating as a yellow pages directory publisher, Hibu got its start as a Long Island-based company, Merchant Advertising Services Inc. in 1930. In 1949, the company formally changed its name to Yellow Book USA Inc. In 1966, Post Office Telecommunications – a division of the UK General Post Office, launched the first UK Yellow Pages classified directory in Brighton, Sussex. Yellow Pages were rolled out across the UK by 1973, and became the first information provider on Prestel. Yellow Pages became a separately identified business within British Telecommunications, now renamed to BT Group after British Telecommunications was privatized in 1984. The red fronted Business Pages launched in 1985 in Bristol and South Wales, and the telephone directory enquiries information service Talking Pages was piloted in Brighton and Bristol from 1987, which then became known as 118 24 7 after 2003. British Telecommunications launched Yell.com, its UK local search engine, in 1996 and acquired YellowBook USA in 1999 for $665 million. Later, Yellow Book USA Inc. was transferred to its Yell Group subsidiary, alongside its UK yellow pages publishing business. The Group was renamed Yell in 2000 and BT restructured in 2001 and agreed to sell the Yell directory business to private equity firms Apax Partners and Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst (today operating in Europe as Lion Capital LLP) for £2.14 billion/$3.5 billion, making it then the largest non-corporate leveraged buyout in European history. 2001–2011 Yell bought McLeodUSA, one of the largest independent directory publishers in the US, for about $600 million in 2002 and floated on London's FTSE in 2003. In May 2005, Yell announced the acquisition of TransWestern Publishing, US directory publisher. The company announced the purchase of the publisher and its holding company, TransWestern Holdings L.P., from a consortium of private equity firms (Thomas H. Lee Partners and CIVC Partners) for $1.575 billion (£829 million). The deal went through later in the year. With the 2003 merger of McLeodUSA business and TransWestern's presence in 25 states, Yellowbook USA, Yell's subsidiary, became the fifth largest directory publisher in the United States. TransWestern had been