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.
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
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.
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
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.
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'
It is extremely difficult to infect a computer with malicious code via a paper business card.
The best solution to every problem is not necessarily high-tech.
I don't respond to AC's.
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
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.
Make the best of the situation. Start trading them like Pokemon or Yugi O! Only this time, the monsters are REAL!!!
I'm not the original AC, but i also agree with you whole heartedly about suits and ties... I detest wearing a suit and/or tie, and find it utterly ridiculous that people have some kind of perception that someone wearing a suit is somehow going to do their job better than someone who isn't.
In many cases, the opposite is true... Personally i find such clothing extremely uncomfortable, and will be spending more time thinking about how uncomfortable i am and watching the clock so i can get into some more sensible clothes, whereas if i was dressed comfortably i could concentrate more thoroughly on the work at hand. I've also found that people who aren't very good tend to wear a suit to try and hide their deficiencies, while those who are confidant in their abilities don't feel the need to dress in any particular way.
Business cards i think are just obsolete, they served a purpose once but have been superseded by modern technology. Suits and ties never served any useful purpose whatsoever.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
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
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.
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.
And that is exactly why business cards will not die. Every phone needs to be compatible, be it blackberry, Iphone or anything else. It needs to be fast fast as pushing a button from your phone being in standby to send a card and as simple as receiving an email where the only action needed is to save or delete. Until you get a group of non tech people to exchange cards with their phones just as fast or faster then it takes for me to hand you a piece of paper, business cards will not go away.
Ties cut off circulation to your brain and make you dumber. Wear a tie for too long, and the only job you'll be qualified for will be in Management.
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
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....
I was going to moderate discussion, but I had to respond to your trollish comment.
All cultures have social cues and dress codes, whether explicit or implicit. In other cultures (e.g. Europe), class is established through other means. However, in creating a "classless" society, people in US goes out of their way to understand the hierarchy of their fellows.
Whether or not you are willing to admit it, dress codes are a large part of such perception. They provide a number of cues, both social and economic. You may disagree with them or even think they are meaningless, but you cannot wish them away. So, they do serve a purpose -- one of establishing social status and conveying one's position, even if you think it's unnecessary.
Now, your statement on the comfort of suits and the like is particularly silly. It sounds like your suits are ill fitting, and not very well made. As someone who wears suits on a regular basis, I cannot tell you just how comfortable good clothes are. Good materials (wool, cotton with high thread count) and good fit (get the right size clothes, and take it to a tailor) can make a difference.
Back on topic re: business cards, I use both personal and professional business cards. It serves a very useful purpose, especially when traveling (which I do, a lot). It's a quick and easy networking tool, and no matter what the denizens of Slashdot think, the vast majority of the world still uses it pretty regularly.
Why should i waste considerable sums of money on a tailored suit
A few reasons, Bert:
Wearing a suit shows that you appreciate the gravity of a situation. If you show up to a meeting in jeans and t-shirt where everyone else is in suits and ties, you're flipping them the bird - "This meeting isn't as important as you think it is, and you're not as important as you think you are."
Conversely, donning a suit and tie yourself signals to everyone else that they were worth dressing up for, and that their concerns are worth at least a minimum amount of pomp.
It's all about controlling your interactions with other people and managing their perceptions. Going to the Men's Wearhouse and saying, "I want to cosplay someone respectable" can do wonders for your professional success, especially when interviewing.
That said, I'm happy my employer's dress code is essentially "nothing that would upset HR." If everyone else is in jeans and t-shirt, you should be in jeans and t-shirt.
DATABASE WOW WOW
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.