Slashdot Mirror
Business Cards the Latest Internet Casualty
Hugh Pickens writes "Chalk up another looming casualty of the Internet age: business cards. Ubiquitous as pinstripes, the 2-by-3.5-inch pieces of card stock have long been a staple in executive briefcases. But now, writes Matt Stevens, young and Web-savvy people who are accustomed to connecting digitally, see business cards as irrelevant, wasteful — and just plain lame. 'When I go into a meeting and there are five bankers across the table, they all hand me business cards and they all end up in a pile, in a shoe box somewhere,' says Diego Berdakin, the founder of BeachMint, a fast-growing e-commerce site that has raised $75 million from investors without ever bothering to print a card. 'If someone comes in to meet me, we've already been connected through email, so it really doesn't feel like a necessity in my life.' Some 77 million smartphone users have downloaded the Bump app, which allows them to bump their phones together and instantly exchange contact information. Others carry a personalized quick-response code that smartphones can scan like a hyperlink. At 36, Ralph Barbagallo is near the cutoff for Generation Y but despises business cards all the same. Barbagallo says he goes to three major conferences a year and has to distribute paper cards, but lugging and exchanging fistfuls of them is a pain and it's hard to remember who is who. 'When they run out this time, I'm not printing any more,' says Barbagallo. 'They need to die somehow.'"
QR Code containing VCard on the back. Tada, became relevant and useful again.
I want to set up a business card with one of those digicodes on the back that can be scanned by a smartphone, such as appear on YouTube VEVO broadcasts.
Realistically, business cards are for giving people your contact info, and nothing more. I never give business cards to people who already have my contact info, but they're invaluable for shows and conferences where they don't have your contact info.
Plus they're handy for dropping in to those "win a meal" restaurant promotion draws. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Business cards, just like business suits, have no real purpose other than to make "executives", "managers" and "professionals" feel important, and to make them think that other people consider them important.
If you're of any value to me, I don't need your fucking business card. I'll already know how to get in touch with you, or I'll be able to find out very easily using other means.
When somebody gives me a business card, I know they're full of shit. When that person is wearing a suit, I know they're doubly full of shit. Real people getting real work done don't go handing out business cards. They're too fucking busy doing real work!
Although I love the idea of getting rid of paper as much as possible and attempt to employ that in my life where possible... there's nothing more annoying than if you're focusing on meeting someone for the first time, establishing a relationship and you have to say "Oh let me get my phone out, here, can you spell your email address for me? How do you spell your last name? Was that a B or a D you just said?"
I hand you my business card, you can clearly see how my name is spelled and can match it up to what I just told you. Visual cue along with audio cue. Then you have their email address and phone number and can take that back to your office and put that into a contact book on your computer, then toss the card. Not to mention you can make notes on their business cards without having to "boot up" any device.
Now, there might be something to be said for having some kind of "automatic business card exchange" application on phones, where you could pull out your phones and "bump" them with someone else's to get their info or whatnot, but honestly I'd still rather just hand the card over and maintain eye contact.
In a typical interpersonal business exchange, what people take away from the meeting is roughly a 70/20/10 split between body language/tone of voice/actual words spoken.
Anytime someone mentions business cards I always think of the scene in american psycho.
"oh my god, it even has a watermark."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ux3vncNNLg
not knowing who is who is not specific to business cards... if you are not careful about who you add on your social network, you end up with a collection of contacts you have no idea why you have them.
business cards are relevant if you handle them properly.. if you can not remember who is who, put more info about the person on the business card or when you enter them into whatever software you use for contacts. Software exists to automate scanning business cards too.
if you are not printing business cards, imho, it is a mistake. not only some people are not computer savvy but it looks good when you have one.
Saying business cards need to die reminds me of how 20 years ago I read articles about how paper would die by year 2000 because of computer exchanges... a lot of bla bla... but business as usual
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
It may be a social nicety, but people seem to be happy to get my business card and I find that people are more likely to follow up. I suspect that the latter is because they are less likely to lose contact information when it comes in a physical form.
Of course there will be some naysayers. There always have been. But I suspect that those people never really followed up on initial meeting anyway.
The reports of the death of business cards may be exaggerated. The cost and production of the cards is lower then ever, via online printers. And the evidence presented here of their death - that a young guy thinks that bankers passing them are "lame" - is not indicative of the success of the non-business-card holder. Another trend hyperbolically expressed as an inevitable outcome on /.
Gently reply
Boo hoo, you have to carry them. Not everyone has a super awesome phone to "bump" with or really gives a shit that you're tired of carrying cards. I want a quick, easy, simple and FOOLPROOF way to get my info out or receive someone elses. Technology can try. Business cards are where its at.
Just using your phone to exchange data makes the entire meeting less tangible and more impersonal.
Same thing for all these 'on line meetings' where you never even see the persons face who is talking.. all you get is a poor quality voice and some video of their desktop.
Handing out a physical object to quantify the event like a card, and actual human interaction in business ( and personal life ) by actually meeting the person. should not be discounted so easily.
or is this the world we want to create, where no one actually interacts anymore and everyone just hides in their cubicle. Just a sad representation of the real world, all vitalized for you in that little box you call a computer.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Every time I get a business card I start quoting the American Psycho business card scene.
"Wow, nice card buddy, it looks similar to mine. Just without the Cillian Braille font."
I've actually had a few people catch on to it. :)
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
When you are in a situation where you are meeting lots of folks quickly, nothing beats handing over a business card. It is a minimal conversation disruption. Ever tried to use the bump app in a crowded convention center? Spotty cell service, finding the damn icon, or your battery is dead... It just doesn't work well enough to replace tried and true paper for casual information exchange. The interruption completely derails a casual conversation. In an environment where you only have a few minutes to chat, it's not worth it.
Now it would be nice if QR embedded codes were standard on business cards to trivialize data entry.
Nope, business cards are here to stay. Folks that don't do serious business level interactions might be able to lose them, but the pros will use them for a while to come until the exchange becomes easier.
For many people, handing out a business card is much quicker than using something like Bump. They also add a layer of expression and professionalism that is easily lost with other mediums. There are people who charge companies a bunch of money per hour just for customising cards, and for good reason; some companies get hoardes of new business just from their cards alone.
I'm not giving up my cards anytime soon. Actually, I need to refresh my design soon! (I take pics of all the cards I get and store them in Evernote; no more mountains of cards or clouding up my address book.)
I usually go home from trade shows with about four of them stuffed in my trousers pockets with people's contact info.
If those aren't handy, you can use the expo program books. Find the page where they present the logos of the "platinum" and "gold" sponsors (i.e., the ones that have the biggest booths) and there's usually plenty of whitespace in between for you to scribble your cell # and email address.
Cards do have issues but it is because you have to remember who gave it to you and why. But that applies to electronic solutions as well. In the 80s, I did some work for Kodak and all of the people I dealt with had cards with a head shot on them. It was very useful for remembering them. I have never seen anyone else who did that. I am from RTEMS and we printed a box of cards with project contact information and a QR-code. I can give them out at shows, to students, etc. and people have a small reminder of how to find out more. More like a tiny cheap brochure for a free software project. Cards have a real place but they have limitations. If you NEVER meet someone cold, then you probably don't need them. But if you do, you need them. And don't forget the personal calling card. Maybe it is her southern manners, but my wife has a personal calling card which is very nice in personal situations. It was very useful when dealing with parents of our kids. They got contact info with no electronics or need for pen and paper involved
Most folks have this feature in their phone: to send Contact info to another phone on-demand.
Presto! a New e-card! Just have your cell phone configured to send out a "Blip Exchange" via bluetooth in a short range burst, and all such info has been exchanged! No more dead-tree business cards to dispose of (or pick you teeth with after a big meal)!
Maybe the cellphone manufacturers can get together (snerk) and come up with something universal to allow for such 'Business Info Exchanges'?
We live in economic exchange-based societies. While you may not value a business card that is handed to you in one of these exchanges, the other person may greatly value it. Even in Westernized Japan, the exchange of business cards is an important ritual and you would be seen as frivolous and irrelevant if you could not offer one. Personally, I like business cards because I tend to pause and write down some key facts about the person on the back of their card if I found them interesting. Another advantage of paper cards is they can exchanged quickly without as much fumbling as is often involved with electronic devices. Let's be honest, how many times have we spent five minutes doing something with an electronic device that we could have done in less than a minute using other tools at hand? Every tool has some associated overhead and while electronics are generally best for handling information, they have their limitations too.
The bottom line is that if you are trying to provide yourself with every edge to beat the competition, it would be stupid to stop handing out professional-looking, calling cards. Besides, the vast majority of people who dislike business cards and will shun you for handing them around are probably too young to have much money or power. In another 20 years, you may need to be a lot more careful about handing out paper cards. Obviously, it would be best to just ask someone if they prefer a quick email with a vcard or a paper card or both. Personally, I would like both.
In principio erat Verbum.
And you'd better take the other guy's card with two hands, and study it respectfully, if you want to seem civilized.
I'm imagining a talking business card (Hal Holbrook voice of course) simply stating "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
One important use for business cards is during job interviews. The candidate should always ask the interviewer for his or her card rather than spend time writing down contact information or using a smart phone. (While the interviewer might have to take a phone call that interrupts the interview, it is very counter-productive for the candidate to use a phone then.) After the interview, the candidate can then send a "thank you" to the interviewer, either E-mail or postal mail. No matter how negative the interview might have seemed, the message should be positive (unless you are truly positive you would NEVER work for that person no matter where he or she might be in the future). In this case, the business card also helps to build a history of your job-search activity, which might be important if you are collecting unemployment benefits.
Very much similar to a business card is a calling card. The difference is that a calling card does not indicate any employment. Yes, the concept is very 19th century but still useful in the 21st century. I use a calling card when shopping if a special order has to be placed. It provides a sales clerk with my contact information so they do not record my name as Roth or Roff instead of Ross; often, the clerk will merely staple my calling card to the order form instead of writing the contact information. As a docent at a public garden, I sometimes give visitors my calling card if they express an interest in contacting me about certain plants or gardening techniques; it has my E-mail address and my Web site's URI (17 Web pages of garden information, not counting my garden diary).
What I find is that, when I get a business card, I generally get full contact info, including a phone number, web site, physical address, etc. When I don't, I get an email address, if I am lucky.
If it is someone hard to reach (i.e., a business executive), having full contact info is very useful. Because of this, I don't see business cards going away any time soon.
I knew this story sounded familiar. Turns out Slashdot did the same story on March 17th last year!
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/03/17/2019237/is-the-business-card-dead
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
... is that there are so many of them. Is not just that "there are an app for them", that app, or standard, or whatever, should be everywhere to really remove the need of bussiness cards, in every phone, even dumb ones. Everyone can pick a paper, and while not everyone have that app (or an alternative one that just send your an URL, like for your linkedin profile) they business cards could remain.
Remembering who is who doesn't get any easier with email or QR or vCards or whatever you choose, so why bring that up at all? If you're running a eCommerce operation I can understand but for most of us dealing in the real world they're not going away anytime soon. For example when we give a presentation or attend some event with a bunch of students, we don't have their email. Any amount of techno-gadgetry won't replace a simple "We'd be very interested in talking to you about employment opportunities, here's my contact info". Same if we meet at a real world breakfast meeting / seminar / conference / training class or indeed anything else that doesn't happen online.
Even if I can just scan the code on the back with my smartphone and hand it back to you, it takes the whole complication out of the exchange. If they can easily convert it to electronic info, great and they can throw away the card. If they can't, well they have it on the card. To use the word "lugging" about a few grams of paper shows this is full of hyperbole and pointless eGadgetry. It's just creating a lot of possible technological issues and suddenly you're standing there fumbling with smart phones instead of doing what you should be doing, which is talking to people. That time is usually so precious that the expense and inconvenience of a card that you can just hand over is trivial by comparison.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The person giving you the card can write contextual information on them that is relevant and has nothing to do with their contact information. Sure you could exchange vcards, but then it is up to you to make that addendum.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
When dealing with business people on your side of the Atlantic, I have had to look up things on occasion.
I remember when I started to deal with a US software company, they sent me a card to put in my "Rolodex". I had to look it up. My dad remembered seeing them but I had certainly never seen one. Now that I know what they look like, I have spotted them in films and on the TV.
A confusing thing I sometimes see a word in the phone number like 1-800-BEST-BUY. This does not work on a blackberry and is very fiddly on normal phones. I think it was probably easier on old fashioned rotary dial ones. How long ago were they?
I have had organisations here say that they don't do email because it insecure. That is possible. Then they get me to fax them. Their faxes are in shared areas and anyone can see what arrives. The list goes on.
Business cards are just another example of this. Anything modern is scary to some highly paid people and they don't want it and have the power to keep it away. Once, business cards must have been "new fangled". They adopted the fax. Why are they so luddite now?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
It is extremely difficult to infect a computer with malicious code via a paper business card.
I find cards useful for my hobby. I take photos, mostly of models. Sometimes when I'm out I'll be chatting to someone and the subject will come up. If she shows an interest in posing for me, I give her my card - no pressure on her then to reciprocate or hand out her number, so she can go away and think about it. The card has my email address and website details, and is blank on the back; if I choose to, I can scribble my number on there as well. It works for me.
So basically the bottom line for me is I have a good reason to carry cards.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Of course Business Cards are still useful.
young and Web-savvy people who are accustomed to connecting digitally, see business cards as irrelevant, wasteful — and just plain lame.
So business cards are obsolete now because...Anonymous doesn't like them? What? Just because this guy thinks he is too cool for business cards doesn't mean they are 'dead' or 'a casualty'.
1. They provide a simple, physical way for people to be reminded of you or find your contact information. Without waiting for your phone or tablet to load, without waiting for a PC to boot. It's a tiny square of paper with all of the information you need. It doesn't take much space, and you can fit hundreds of them in the corner of a desk drawer. No need for a shoebox.
2. They are simple to handle and easier to glean information from than a phone app or barcode. I don't know about you, but I can't read QR codes by sight. It's a lot easier to say "What was that guy's name from the conference?" and pull a card from the stack of lit you got than it is to pull up a vCard app on your phone and hope it has a 'most recent additions' feature so it's easier to find the guy you just entered last night.
3. They provide an artistic first-impression and give someone looking at your information an idea of your style and something to remember you by - something to get stuck in their head and make them remember you even without the card. A really good business card is not even close to a little rectangle of paper. Sometimes they will be lithographed and transparent, die-cut, foil-printed, some even fold into a pop-up scene.
4. They are of HUGE cultural significance in far-Eastern countries, such as Japan. There they have a whole 'ritual' when people present business cards to each other. There is a specific way they stand, greet the other, bow, speak, and trade cards. It is a very formal and respectful way of exchanging contact information, which is still prevalent in one of the most technologically-advanced societies in the world.
In summary, even if the submitter is some lolcat who has no use for business cards, it's not safe to count them out just yet. Saying they're 'dead' or 'obsolete' is just ignorant of the way the rest of the world outside your internet bubble works.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
I'm just wondering when I'm going to suddenly become part of Generation Z. I am firmly in the Generation X category, by age and interests, until they made Generation Y and changed the ages for Gen X to just barely include me. Now this guy, who is 36, is somehow in Gen Y? Stop screwing with stuff after you've made a definition.
Generally, if something "needs to die somehow", it means that:
1) The speaker wants it to die even though it ISN'T, otherwise they'd say "it's dying" or "it needs to die faster"
2) The speaker has no goddamn clue on what a replacement would be, otherwise "somehow" would be replaced with "so we can use X" or "because X is better", and require at least a perfunctory defense of X.
So, the speaker doesn't want business cards, he just wants something that's exactly like business cards but better.
You could apply that same reasoning to anything that has downsides. Like how healthy food and fast food are mutually exclusive. That division needs to "die somehow" so we can start having food that's tasty, cheap, convenient, and won't kill you if you eat it twice a day.
GIVE ME UTOPIA ON A SILVER PLATTER, DAMMIT!
A decent laser printer, a bit of card stock, instant cards. Most are fugly, even "professionally done" cards, but with a basic understanding of typography and a smidge feeling for design, you can produce quite acceptable ones. For the obligatory tech angle, well. Actually. 2d bar codes are just painful. dataglyphs would be nice but they're still proprietary, so much more's the pity.
In fact, I've contemplated scaring up a batch of those old "calling cards". Add great coat, top hat, cane, fine gloves. Instant style.
Who doesn't want to hack code while traveling in a horse-drawn hackney?
The nice thing is that most of the time you will be able to write on them. That means writing small notes about things you just discussed.
That is why I hate designer business cards who try to be clever. I like the boring white ones.
You meet somebody at a reception, at a conference or some other casual event. You start to talk and exchange cards. The talk might be 10 minutes and the moment you part, you take the card back and write on it whatever you think is important.
When you get home, you look at the 30-40 or more cards and see what you wrote on them. That will make it easy which ones you really must talk to, who you must avoid and if you wrote it down the things YOU said to them. Pretty important when you were talking prices for e.g. a new client or ideas you had.
e.g. "Wants a pr0n website with live models. Told him I knew htlm."
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I was curious about the only person directly quoted in this article saying that business cards are passe. I checked out BeachMint Inc.and I laughed. This reporter should have considered talking to some people running successful companies, at the very least.
I don't respond to AC's.
Business Cards are a great way to make a first impression and for making new contacts. If you don't have a business card then it's possible that your line of work does not have a huge demand for one (i.e. Airline Pilot). I would love to get a metal business card from Steve Wozniak:
Woz's Business Card
Another article where someone claims their personal view must surely be the view of the remainder of the world.
Personally I like them for the random contacts you make. Not the prearranged things the article talks about. I run into folks in my industry via flights, friends of friends, and other fairly happenstance meetings. Hell, I used to give out my professional card for personal contacts (with the preface of course - "I'm not trying to be an arrogant douche and flaunt a status, it's just much easier to give you my number this way") - though I've since created a non-business card for handing out to people without having to worry about the negative inferences from the former.
And yes - as another poster(s) has stated: QR codes and the like are a great feature to have on them these days. Worst case you carry one and you can exchange info by just scanning each other's cards.
Make the best of the situation. Start trading them like Pokemon or Yugi O! Only this time, the monsters are REAL!!!
If you have regular contacts with clients and they expect a business card, it's usually a good idea to have one for them. Business cards are going away, but it's still a good idea to cater to the customer. Like fax machines, business cards eventually won't be necessary.
Yah that's how I see social media and other hipster forced ways to communicate. If you are 15 maybe its uncool but if you are of a relevant age business cards are still a must and will be for a long time. Not everyone wants to lug around a fucking slim brick computer as a phone.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Surprised it hasn't been mentioned, but...
When I am in client meeting, I like to get business cards from each of the participants at the table. These people are strangers to me. I place the cards on the table in front of me, next to my notepad. I order them by the placement around the table, giving me instant access to names and titles. I then transfer the information to my pad, along with notes (when I am not speaking, of course).
After the meeting completes, I then transfer information back to the cards.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
"Thing X" the Latest Internet Casualty
... er, what were we talking about again? There's just way too much dicking around. Sure, it's nifty and all, but that's about all it is.
Hogwash.
This same old story (or something like it) gets rehashed on Slashdot every once a while. In fact, I remember a discussion on exactly the problem with thinking that business cards are no longer necessary.
A business card only requires you to reach into your pocket and hand it over without disturbing the flow of a conversation or even breaking eye contact. Some "app" requires you to grab your phone, look down, switch it on, find the icon, open it, then finally receive the contact info and
Just because some rich hipster thinks that business cards are so passe doesn't mean they're going the way of the dodo.
Wow cards have been gone for about 5 years now! only time I've used them since was in japan because they have a whole ritual about it.
This is one of the most ridiculous things i've ever heard. Not everyone has internet or smartphones and I think it will always be that way. I give business cards as a personal contact as well for business use. Many of the people i give cards to do not have smart phone or even internet so they need my phone number. People who do have email I would have to give my email address anyway and its easier to jsut give them a card with the address they can punch in later rather than trying to speak it out loud. In many ways, demanding another party you are speaking with to use some odd online app may also be rude and inconsiderate, intead of just giving them a business card. There is a simplicity with business cards as well, where an online sort thing thing tends to actually bring in more complexity and frustration. I would often end up writing down my web address anyway on a piece of paper, which is what I have on my business cards anyway. Business cards are simple and "just work" while some electronic alternative is often very complex and prone to numerous technical glitches.
I'm looking for a simple E-Ink display and controller that will fit into a wallet or similar sized container. I already have QR codes that point to my web site which include customized identity strings on printed stationary. I can modify the ID in the QRC URL to redirect the particular target audience to a customized version of my web site. Or just track who visited and when. With the wallet sized display, I can whip it out in a meeting, have other attendees scan it and achieve the same level of customization on the fly.
I hereby place this idea into the public domain (if its not patented already). USPTO, go suck an egg.
Have gnu, will travel.
My mind, unless you are in sales business cards are just a penis-extension along with a corporate supplied phone, etc. Maybe I've just been working at cheap employers but they all seem to limit cellphones to managers because "they need them" even when it is the drones that are the ones getting paged (yes paged) back to work. Why can't we have an oncall cellphone instead of a oncall pager "because it is cheaper". Ah but the manager having a cellphone that he never gets called on that isn't expensive :-)
Palm had a good idea: you could send an address book entry to another Palm device using its IR interface. Dead simple, too.
Unfortunately it was Palm-only, making it useless in most circumstances. I'm not aware of a replacement in today's phones. You could email someone a vCard, but that requires knowing their phone number. Is Bluetooth ubiquitous enough to be usable for this?
As a long-time geek, I carry lots of pens in my shirt pocket. I decided to turn them into business cards.
I had a bunch of nice-looking personalized pens made, with my e-mail address inscribed on them. If someone asks me for my e-mail address, I hand them a pen. I then have to explain that the pen is not to write down my e-mail address, but it has my e-mail address alreay on it, and they can keep the pen. I have handed out more than 100 pens in the last couple of years. People tend to keep them longer than paper business cards because they have utility: you can write with them.
My e-mail address includes my name, and if you search the Web for my e-mail address you get my web site (hosted by the workstation under my desk at home) and my résumé, which includes a picture of me, my telephone number, and my mailing address. That's better than a business card.
while I agree that no tie is comfortable, if you find suits uncomfortable then you aren't wearing a well made and properly tailored suit. a good suit can feel like wearing your comfiest flannel pajamas.
disclaimer: I speak only of men's suits; no woman's suit will ever be that comfortable.
Yeah, let's get rid of business cards. Should be ok cuz I haven't gotten nearly as many "My phone blew up and I lost everything, please re-rend all your info" lately.
It seems all these tech visionaries only start beating he drum about the demise of some existing tech or practice AFTER they have something to sell to replace it. So I'd look for what this person may be trying to sell.
I have to wonder if the writer of this article has ever been in a business situation. Business cards, in tech circles and other professions, are still very much in use. They're small, simple, inexpensive and they don't disappear if you lose your phone. Handing out a business card is a lot more effective and less cumbersome than trying to sync phones or manually enter contact info during an interaction.
The article reminds me of the "paperless office" articles of the 70s and 80s or the "e-mail is dead" articles of the 90s, or land-lines are dead articles in the wake of smart phones. Paper, e-mail and, for most of the people I know, land-lines are still the norm.
QR Code containing VCard on the back. Tada, became relevant and useful again.
I prefer to have the QR code on the *front*. Ditch some of the fluffy artwork and put the QR code with vcard info on the front with the traditional text contact info. The resolution of somewhat recent cell phone cameras can handle a 1x1 inch vcard QR code. The 3MP camera in an old iPhone 3GS works just fine with this size. The iPhone 4 has a 5MP and the 4S an 8MP camera. I expect comparable cameras on older and more recent Android devices.
Use the back for other QR codes, for example links to product info or online store purchase pages. I find that a 3/4x3/4 inch QR code can offer a link to the iTunes store that is readable on the old iPhone 3GS. I do so on promotional versions of my business card where I know I will be focusing on a particular product.
Given the wide capabilities of QR codes I'm sure various individuals will find good uses for distinct QR codes on both sides of a card.
Also, the premise of the summary is mistaken. Business cards are not obsolete, they are just used differently. A stack in a shoe box is a waste. However a common modern practice by some is to accept the paper card, scan the QR code at that moment with a phone, and to hand back the paper card while saying thank you. I find doing so is sometimes faster than getting bump to work. Plus you have the extra capability of secondary QR codes.
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/user/pan/pan.html
"Scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Center (San Jose, CA) are perfecting a new Personal Area Network technology that uses the natural electrical conductivity of the human body to transmit electronic data.
Using a small prototype transmitter (roughly the size of a deck of cards) embedded with a microchip, and a slightly larger receiving device, the researchers can transmit a pre-programmed electronic business card between two people via a simple handshake. Whats more, the prototype allows data to be transmitted from sender to receiver through up to four touching bodies."
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
A confusing thing I sometimes see a word in the phone number like 1-800-BEST-BUY. This does not work on a blackberry and is very fiddly on normal phones. I think it was probably easier on old fashioned rotary dial ones. How long ago were they?
Actually the letters work just fine on an iPhone, and I imagine any touch screen based Android phone as well, modern home phones, etc. All these phones have both numbers and letters on the buttons. Its hardly something rotary specific, as a matter of fact it became more popular after buttons replaced rotary.
I think you are focusing on a niche type of phone, those with little chiclet keyboard buttons for dialing. If anything is on its way to obsolescence like rotary phones it is such chiclet keyboards. Touchscreens with big readable buttons are the future.
While at Apple in the early 90's, I suggested this concept to the person in charge of developing what became the General Magic handheld product. My concept was exactly what Bump is today. General Magic mutated it a bit, calling it "Kiss and Tell".
If I had a nickel for every conceived invention....
"Chalk up another looming casualty of the Internet age: business cards. Ubiquitous as pinstripes, the 2-by-3.5-inch pieces of card stock have long been a staple in executive briefcases.
This hasn't changed and isn't going to change anytime soon. (and pinstripes haven't been ubiquitous for a loooongggg time)
But now, writes Matt Stevens, young and Web-savvy people who are accustomed to connecting digitally, see business cards as irrelevant, wasteful — and just plain lame.
Only if you interact with a rather narrow group of people. Being "young and web-savvy" doesn't equal greater intellect or better ideas. In most of the world business cards remain ubiquitous and aren't going away any time soon.
'When I go into a meeting and there are five bankers across the table, they all hand me business cards and they all end up in a pile, in a shoe box somewhere,' says Diego Berdakin, the founder of BeachMint, a fast-growing e-commerce site that has raised $75 million from investors without ever bothering to print a card.
The ability to raise money has little to do with handing out business cards.
Some 77 million smartphone users have downloaded the Bump app, which allows them to bump their phones together and instantly exchange contact information.
And yet oddly I've never run into a single one of them. I've never even had anyone ask if I had that app. Even if I did, I don't really want my smartphone address book getting cluttered up with a bunch of random people's contact info. I do take pictures of business cards I want to keep but don't want to carry and use Evernote or Dropbox to hold them. Then I can write notes later if needed.
Palm had a good idea: you could send an address book entry to another Palm device using its IR interface. Dead simple, too.
Except that you then clutter up your address book with a bunch of addresses of people who you don't/barely know and won't contact again. And it wasn't really dead simple and it wasn't especially quick either.
Is Bluetooth ubiquitous enough to be usable for this?
Not remotely. (no pun intended)
I suspect that the GP is actually quite successful. After all, if you're successful, then it means that you're financially independent, you don't need a job, and don't really have to give a damn what others think. That means you can completely avoid wearing a suit.
In fact, those who wear suits are likely the least successful of them all. They're wearing those suits while working a job that makes somebody else money. After all, if they were successful, they wouldn't have to work those jobs in the first place, and wouldn't be wearing suits, since no sensible person wears a suit voluntarily.
Business cards always seem to end up being used as bookmarks by me. To mark where I was at... in a book... printed on paper... oh dear...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
If you do any business in Asia at all, especially in Japan, it will be extraordinarily awkward for you if you get rid of your business cards. You will come across as someone who doesn't know their business culture, or--depending on how well known your company is there, and how often you work in Japan--as someone who just doens't care that you're being rude. The exchange of business cards is a ritual, in which you carefully present your business card to your new colleague, and an exchange takes place. This is a key part of introducing yourself. The first time I went to Japan, I didn't bring enough. It was absolutely mortifying to run out halfway through the trip, because you exchange business cards with absolutely everyone you meet. I went as my organization's representative, as we were participating in an international exhibition. I had to exchange cards with my translator, my escort, the representative from the newspaper sponsor, the multiple representatives from the airline our cargo was transported on, the customs brokers we worked with--and that's before I even met the people who work in my field! I went through 40 business cards in two days. When I got back, I mailed cards to those people who hadn't gotten one. I've found that this level of exchange also holds true when working with China, Cambodia, and Thailand. As for the idea that they're useless--I disagree. When I get back from one of these trips, I take a photo of the business card and upload it to Evernote, along with a note of on which trip and project that person was part of. Eventually Evernote gets around to OCR'ing the text in the card. I now have a record of everyone I've met through work which is mine. Not my employer's, mine, that I can take with me if I leave to go somewhere else.
How is it easier to remember who is who when you get their information via Bump or QR code?
I'd much rather get a piece of paper from my plumber, luddite aunt, or DMV worker than trust them that their info on their smartphone is accurate and *safe*.
I know that the Bump app is ubiquitous, but what if the plumber is using some E-Card Widget made in China and just tell me to install that app on my phone just so i can have his "business card"?
No thanks.
business cards have to have blank backs. So you can write on them how you met the giver, and what you want to do with them in the future. That's also why graphic designers that come up fancy new ideas of why your business card should have something else besides a blank back ('because it's boring'), should be run out of town. On a rails.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I work in an industry where we're not allowed to bring mobile phones into the building. Our conferences, meetings, seminars etc. are also mobile phone free. There's tens of thousands of us.
So, cards will be around for a while.
Meanwhile back in reality, while you want to dump those business cards into shoe boxes, good luck trying that to a real client who wants to invest millions into a building and millions into machines. Yeah, I'm sure you'd be out there looking for a printing company to print you out some business cards as fast as possible because the vast majority of businesses still use business cards and they'll quick to forget about you when you don't give them anything.
Seems to me there's a risk in using Bump -- what exactly are you sharing, and with who?
The iPhone offers a p2p bluetooth network, but as far as I'm aware Bump doesn't use that. Instead it's based on a centralized server which handles all the data. Even if it's encrypted in some way, do you really trust these types of services to be the middle man in your data exchange?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Bump sucks especially if someone has to install it, and QR codes can be a privacy trap. Paper with an email address and phone number is still the best.
The blank space on the card, esp the back, is there for you to write why/how this person is important to you. Bring a pen/pencil.
Epitaph: At last! Root access!
the author had a random opinion and briefly interviewed 2 kids who were too cool for school who agreed with his opinion
srly? ppl get paid to publicly masturbate like this?
Most insightful post in the entire discussion. The whole suit thing is about impressing others. Those who are truly powerful have no need to impress others. To those who think a suit is so necessary: what would happen if a billionaire decided he was never going to wear a suit again? Who would stop him? Would he lose power or influence? Of course not. The same choice is available to each and every one of us, whether we realize it or not.
It all comes down to personality type. Maybe some people actually love suits and don't mind wearing one. Others may not like them but wear them anyways because it's "what you do." I myself have always been the type of person who simply refused to go with any social norm just because it's a social norm. I do what I like. I'm a blue jeans and tshirt kind of person. I don't prefer khakis because I like being able to get down on the floor and work on something without a second thought, then just dust myself off afterwards. Suits are fun to wear from time to time, but I don't like the special care and I'd never spend more than $500 on one. I would never wear one just because someone said I had to. In fact that would make it more likely I'd dress down on purpose, just to prove a point.
This is why some people in the suit crowd hate people like me--because we blatantly and openly refuse to buy into their oh-so-very-important social norm they have created and uphold. By doing so we are a challenge to its very legitimacy, and are thus a threat to their collective egos.
I love looking like an average poor dude with no power or influence. The bottom line is, my money is just as green as anyone's. I love it when I can catch people in the act of making shallow judgments based on appearances. Makes it much easier to see who's an idiot, who's self absorbed, who's a schemer, etc. Makes it all the more satisfying when I suddenly lay my cards down, clear everyone out, then walk away with a smug grin. There's nothing like the confidence and satisfaction of knowing you have the upper hand in everything, knowing you can blow people's minds at any time but most of the time choosing not to, because why give up your advantage? When you're going around constantly advertising your status and worth, you are not only showing yourself as a target, but changing people's reactions to you. This prevents you from seeing people as they truly are.
As far as social trends go, here's the strange thing: when you make a billion dollars in a pair of blue jeans.......suddenly others start wearing them too.
Funny how that works.
Business cards won't disappear until offices really are paperless. Non-technical people just aren't going to adapt the way people who are into tech would want them to, and sometimes people have different paradigms they work from other than "technical solutions are best".
Wellington Ma's business card was a rectangular slice of pink synthetic quartz, laser-engraved with his name, 'The Ma-Mariano Agency,' an address on Beverly Boulevard, and all kinds of numbers and e-mail addresses. It arrived by GlobEx in its own little gray suede envelope while Rydell was still in the hospital.
'Looks like you could cut yourself on it,' Rydell said.
'You could, many no doubt have,' said Karen Mendelsohn, 'and if you put it in your wallet and sit down, it shatters.'
'Then what's the point of it?'
'You're supposed to take very good care of it. You won't get another.'
(copied from http://newark.pardey.org/book/virtual.html)