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.'"
People are still happy to get them ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Less personal and tangable (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Cards are not just for Personal Contact (Score:4, Interesting)
Value in the eye of the beholder (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Only people who are full of shit use them. (Score:1, Interesting)
Geez.. I wish you hadn't posted this as AC.. I'd LOVE to know who has the SAME idea about these two abortions.. One, a suit, which is, howEVER you look at it, a uniform... I HATE uniforms.. After doing time in the US Army, I doubly HATE uniforms. And that demon-spawn from Hades, the tie.. Designed from the get-go to choke the living shit out of everybody who has the misfortune to work where they mandate them. Fortuantly, the tide seems to be turning away somewhat from them. I get a good laugh to see TSA bozos (and others) who wear those absolutely hilarious clipon ties. I'm the IT manager in a new startup, and the management team, being that is mostly people like me, who despise suits/ties, has ruled that our office wear will always be "business-casual", ie: polo-shirt/khakis. We REALLY hate suits/ties! In fact, when we schedule interviews (we're going to be hiring a fair amount soon), the interviewee will be strongly advised about "business-casual" dress for the interview.
Since we're a startup, a discussion about stationary/business cards was held the other day, and the concensus on business cards was "waste of $$$"...
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I want cards with those scanner codes embedded (Score:5, Interesting)
Gee, I guess the burgers and stuff I've eaten over the years were a figment of my imagination.
I don't win often, but I do win.
And I've never found myself put on a spam list or otherwise had my contact info abused for doing so.
Unlike web companies, brick and mortar businesses like restaurants still give a damn about their customers.
Re:The Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan has had this for years (as they have with QR codes, which we're just getting around to now). Phones have an IR port - you just touch the ports to one another and it exchanges contact information.
I swear, the fastest way to become rich in America with cell phones is to go look at what Japan is doing today and shamelessly copy it as fast as possible.
Also of note on things we can't quite do yet: paying for train/bus fare and using it like an RFID credit card.
Re:The Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Been there, done that. Remember the Palms, Visors, HP whatevers and the original PDAs? All with IR ports. Wonderful things they were.
Could output to a printer. Made a wonderful TV remote. You could program it with a secret code to have the UN's black helicopters home in on it.
We've lost so many things. So many things.
Re:Disagree completely (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people don't understand the aspect of the business card as a form of personally identifying yourself to the other party. In my work ( real estate ) I have flexibility of my card design plus look and feel. I spent a very long time coming up with the right tactile feel that I wanted, the right font, and the right colors. it's part of the impression I want to make.
A girl that I met recently was along the same lines, she was a graphic designer and had the most amazing card, it spoke a story of her skills and it only had her email address and name.
that's why you want to spend time thinking about your card, it should speak a story about you. For example: if you are a coder, and you grok python, I would put some interesting code on my card ( bucket sort maybe or something that only another serious coder would note ).
my card is simple: it's a 100% cotton bond, with watermark with my family crest, it has some cobalt blue outlines, with some forest green. my name, phone number, email and business name. Simple but elegant
I use pens instead (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I want cards with those scanner codes embedded (Score:5, Interesting)
Noone is going to be downloading *anything* directly into my phone like that.
Various folks have been pushing electronic business cards for years. They really fall into two categories:
1) spam me senseless operations, which are gathering data and presuming that this opts me into whatever they want to send, or gathering data for the "mothership," again for marketing purposes, and
2) multi-level marketing nonsense, designed to get people to "pay" for this service.
The two are not exclusive.
No, I will *not* text to a number or download an ap for your "electronic business card.". It's not going to happen.
And these operations aren't that different from the MLM nonsense like the "hello world" video mail of five years ago, which was about ten years behind simply sending an attached file, or the various videophones running around right now (just $200 plus $30 month for each person) that work marginally better than Skype (on a good day) and are no match for FaceTime . . .
A qr code on the back I'd likely use, but straight access to my data, or trusting your application/server/whatever just isn't gang to happen.
hawk
IBM had one in 1996-this'l blow your mind.... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/user/pan/pan.html [ibm.com]
"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."
General Magic (Score:4, Interesting)
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....
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)