Business Cards the Latest Internet Casualty 243
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.'"
Re:People are still happy to get them ... (Score:4, Informative)
This all seems silly. If you don't want a business card, then don't take it or be polite and take it then dump it in the nearest circular file. That is far easier then having to weed out unwanted crap from an electronic device. Also, some cultures (Japan I am talking about you) routinely hand out business cards as part of their culture. So if you travel to one of these countries you will wind up with hundreds of really unwanted stuff to delete out of your device.
Business Cards and Calling Cards (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I want cards with those scanner codes embedded (Score:5, Informative)
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. :)
Business cards are about as useful as books or magazines: they're instantly available, need no electricity, can be passed from person to person, etc. You can run into someone in an elevator and during your 20 second pitch hand them a card. Not everyone's going to say "Oh let me get out my smartphone and start the QR code app and scan the QR code, etc". Maybe they don't have time for you. Maybe they're already using their phone (very likely). Maybe they only half heard you because they have something else on their mind. Whatever the reason, business cards are useful.
.com types ask for business cards. They're not dead.
I still have IT internet-savvy entrepreneur
Usually I hang on to cards I'm handed until I have a few seconds to scan the QR code. If there isn't a code I take a photo of the card with the smartphone and toss the card.
But thank you for this article, reminded me I should see if there's "an app for that", some sort of app that can scan a business card and add them to my contacts. Quick google search lead me to this page with the top 10 iPhone business card scanning apps available. [inman.com] I'll try some of the free versions and see which works best.
Re:I want cards with those scanner codes embedded (Score:0, Informative)
Yes, make the code harder to scan. That really helps make it more convenient.
What one should really do is figure out a way to make a code with as few modules (pixels) as possible (use L redundancy and the most efficient encoding), make the contrast as high as possible (i.e. black on white) and leave the required four modules wide white border around the code. The last bit is actually quite important because scanners have a much harder time scanning codes without the "quiet" zone. And print the code big enough. 1 mm^2 modules are a good target size, which means a version 6 code with L redundancy is the highest capacity code before you have to compromise on the size and/or the quiet zone. That gives you 134 bytes of data, which is a tight budget for a VCard.
Re:One thing about business cards... (Score:5, Informative)
You would think so, wouldn't you? [wired.com]