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Mon, Jun 30, 2008 17:43 EDT

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Posted by: Esther Schindler in Rants Topic: InfrastructureBlog: You're the Boss
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They're fragile, easy to lose, and hard to convert into a useful digital format. So why are we still using business cards as the primary way to exchange personal data?
Somewhere on my desk is a small piece of cardboard. Emblazoned upon it, in all its glory, is a vendor's full name, title, company name (spelled correctly), logo, e-mail ID and (should I be so backward as to use such things) her phone number. I just spent 15 minutes searching for that business card. I did not find it—though I did find a travel receipt I should have included in my last expense report, a book I'd intended to read and a coffee cup best described as "mold experiment in progress."
It irritates, me, though, that we're still using business cards in the first place. Surely, this is an opportunity for technology to improve the quality of our lives? Business cards are no longer suitable to the task for which they were intended: a shortcut way to exchange useful personal information.
The end result is that data I want to have is strewn across my desk, stuffed into the darkest recesses of the black hole I call "my purse," and otherwise is unavailable to my impatient whim.
That's not to say that I don't appreciate a good business card when I see one—at least on aesthetic grounds. Done well, business card are beautiful, tiny billboards. Done poorly; well, I still hold a grudge about the Art Director who thought it'd be elegant to make the back of the magazine's business cards black. (Nobody could scribble on the back. Which is an important feature.)
Business card have a long and glorious history. They began as "calling cards," which had strict rules of etiquette, such as folding the upper right corner to indicate that one delivered the card personally (a servant would never hand his master's card folded). I'm pleased to share even this tidbit of manners with you, because it demonstrates that the money my parents spent on my college education was not wasted. I wrote a term paper on "The Effect of the Industrial Revolution on Etiquette Books, 1830-1870," and this is my first opportunity to use even the smallest amount of the knowledge I gained.
I think the MAIN problem with business cards is that they're analog. I like using vCards -- perhaps because I'm a Mac user -- and would prefer to get a vCard attachment to an e-mail message than any signature line.
I wouldn't mind business cards as much if they were barcoded or had some other way of quickly getting that information into a digital system. Properly "semantically" tagged so that the name went into the right field in my address book or bookmarks. With cellphone camera technology that can now scan in barcodes, it should be easier soon.
But maybe just having a url that had it all in text form would be good too
With respect, Esther, I'd like to dissent. Sure, I'd like it if I could automagically upload all the info on a business card into my computer. But these days my "Rolodex" isn't on my laptop or desktop anyway -- it's online, in the form of Twitter, LinkedIn, my Gmail account, my work e-mail, etc.
With search and social-media functionality being what it is, I find it pretty easy to find the folks I need to find, and in fact I get a kick out of making new social-media connections with folks after I meet them in a conference or whatever context would lead me to collect their business card. On top of that, these days it seems like *one* piece of information -- an e-mail address, a Twitter handle, what have you -- is the key to all the rest of it once you hook up to a person's social-network profiles.
Oh, and on a practical note, this Cool Tools suggestion from Kevin Kelly
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001012.php
has *completely* changed the way I think about business cards. It's low-tech and basically foolproof -- even for this fool. :)
Overall, I agree with your point: technology can make business cards obsolete. A few months ago, after striking up an idle chat with someone at Logan airport (I think we inherently recognized each other as geeks), we made the conversational overtures of "let's keep in touch." Instead of offering one another a business card, though, my new friend asked, "What's your twitter ID? and area you on LinkedIn?" That was a first for me... but I'm sure it won't be the last time.
...these days my "Rolodex" isn't on my laptop or desktop anyway -- it's online, in the form of Twitter, LinkedIn, my Gmail account, my work e-mail, etc.
That's the problem. It's in the "etc." For all their faults, business cards have some standards, such as size (well, to some degree -- let's not bring geography variations into this) and the fact that we recognize them immediately for what they are. And they fit into some form of Rolodex.
Plus, business cards are usable by people like my sister, who (I'm not making this up) cannot figure out how to use a Web browser. She can hand someone a piece of cardboard, though. And no computers or smartphones are needed. For all the advantages of social networks, the requirement is that the individuals belong to the networks (and in particular to the same ones); and at some point you have to get the data into them. That's not always feasible in the serendipitous way we human-network, such as the stranger met on a train.
Instead, I have my digital data in several places: e-mail, LinkedIn, my Mac's Address Book, etc. While tools like Google desktop search can help, when I need to look for Sandy's business card, I poke in several places.
OnePin.com has something going on to try to change the way we share this type of information. It looked interesting to me but more interesting is the trend a previous poster offered up... Social Media -- It's better than biz card data in that:
the information is often more comprehensive and certainly more relevant to the context in which we interact/interacted with the individual
It's controlled by the user publishing the information and not some "Business Card Request Form". This allows the user to supply the contact method that's best - maybe even media specific.
I also like vCard attachments. LinkedIn is allowing the download of vCard formated data for people in our networks. It's handy! We all should be better about considering what to share (supplying the most useful information) in these social media environments.