WhitePages launches Hiya for easy contact management on the Web and iPhone

With so many online services and devices out there, it can be difficult to keep all your contacts up to date across them all. Online directory company WhitePages has today launched a new product aimed at making this a lot easier.

Hiya is available as a web app and an iPhone app and allows you to import contacts from Google. These are then compiled into a central list, removing duplicates and pulling in any additional information about them from White Pages’ directory listings. This will be especially useful for those with American contacts, as the company says it holds public listings for more than 90% of US adults.

Users will receive automatic updates when any contact information changes and can choose whether they want 1 or 2-way sync between sources, or to not sync at all.

At present Hiya is simply a useful way of tidying up your Google Contacts list, removing any duplicates and adding missing data. However, WhitePages says that it will be expanded to support Yahoo!, Facebook, MSN Live, LinkedIn, CSV files and more in the coming months, with an Outlook plugin and Android and Blackberry apps also on the way later in the year. Once these are introduced, Hiya could very likely become an ideal central hub for all your contacts’ information.