Send Business Cards to an Inbox or Mobile Phone
As a rule of thumb, if you want to get your name out there and continuously make connections when traveling or attending conferences, having a business card is your best bet. While there are a variety of ways to make your business card, the costs of making them can be pretty expensive and it kills a ton of trees. Why not send your business cards via the web or your mobile phone instead?
Retaggr
Retaggr is a nifty interactive profile card service. Create a new and unique way for people to not only email or call you, but also connect with you on social networks that you're active on. Promote your blog, work, and RSS feed all in the same space. Once your done creating your profile card, share it with friends via email or embed it in your blog.
211me
211me is a funky and creative business card service. However, a key feature of 211me is being able to send your pre-made business cards to someone's mobile phone. If your phone supports v-card downloading, you can save the information from each business card sent to you. 211me gives users a ton of room to express themselves with their 211me cards by providing a great selection of customization options to choose from.
DropCard
DropCard allows you to create both personal and business cards and send them via email from your cellphone. However, it's a little more limited than the previous services listed. For example, the number of services available to add to your card is short compared to 211me and Retaggr. Nevertheless, it makes up for what it lacks with it's nifty text messaging service and the option to add in your social network profiles manually.
The Future of Business Cards?
Business cards are exchanged left and right at conferences and tech gatherings all the time. However, how many cards do you keep up with? Will the fact that people can now send you such information to your cell phone or inbox drive you crazy or help you manage your contacts even better? I personally wouldn't want people emailing me such information. However, I wouldn't mind using these services to manage contacts in my cellphone, especially 211me. What do you think: could this be the future of business cards?
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What is wrong with the hcard format for exchanging business card like data over any transport you fancy ? Or instead you can also send the URL to your profile on some social network such as LinkedIn or even to your own home page. And why should a short profile with a compilation of links be hosted on someone else's site ?
Let me guess. When you sign up, they want to invite all the people in your address book to use their service right?
I work in a little startup called Nuebbo who aims to bring business cards to the web. You can import the cards and contacts you already have, ask their owners to keep them updated and share yours by giving a URL, a QR code or putting a badge in your blog or website. We are also working in geolocating your contact's cards and downloading this info onto your GPS.
We are somewhere in between social networking and address books as all the data you store with us is private and safe but you can share your card with whoever you wish.
The business cards of the next decades will probably auto sync to a person's mobile or PC.
They may even have RFID tags
Here's one that absolutely needs to be added to your list:
http://businesscard2.com/
Thanks for the coverage Corvida (I'm one of the guys from retaggr) - it's always good to hear from those who are finding our service useful. :)
With regard to spamming one's address book, retaggr aims to provide additional context around one's interactions online (such as leaving a comment, blog posts etc) rather than being a mechanism to to pass on these details directly to every contact.
Odds are that your contacts already know quite a bit about you - retaggr allows those who are discovering you for the first time to very quickly and easily gain an idea of who you are without visiting numerous sites.
"Let me guess. When you sign up, they want to invite all the people in your address book to use their service right?" Good one Marcus! Made me laugh.
These are all much better options than trying to send business cards via bluetooth. I tried doing that at a gathering of fairly tech-savvy mobile users, and the bluetooth connection process was so painfully challenging that we all gave up and started handing out our paper cards.
However, the experience taught us all something: if a new technology hopes to prevail as the future of business cards, it will have to be faster, simpler and more reliable than handing out little pieces of paper.
Oh please, is this for real? If the example screen shots above are anything to go by I don't think anyone with the slightest understanding of what design can add to a brand will ever want to leave anyone a card like this.
None of these match the most important feature of a business card does; i.e. you can't bump into someone at a meeting/bar and give them something tangible that, even when the fog of time/a hangover dampens their recollection, they'll still have your details. I've certainly struggled to remember someones name a day or two after a brief meeting - I'm not going to remember some disposible URL.
Keep chopping down those trees...
It is an interesting concept for sure and traditional business networking is changing, but I agree with some of the other comments about the ease of taking the business card virtual. People like to touch things and when you do get a great looking card, it means more than a link. Times will change though.
Brian
http://www.konnects.com
I'm really glad to see these solutions (such as they are) because I recently wondered "Why are we still using business cards?" on my blog at CIO.com. As much as I appreciate their tactile feedback, when I come home from a conference I rarely remember who 50% of these cards are for. (I get a lot of cards.) There has to be a better way, and while these solutions may not all do the trick (I'm going to have to check out a few), I'm glad someone is trying.
In the meantime... on my return from the open source convention, I took the stack of cards and plugged them into LinkedIn. The reason I grabbed someone's card is, after all, so I could keep in touch with them and find them once again... which sure isn't going to happen if it's just a tiny piece of paper somewhere on my desk.
Still... isn't it funny that the original Palm could "beam" this info, and that none of the later PDAs and smartphones can?
You can import the cards and contacts you already have, ask their owners to keep them updated and share yours by giving a URL, a QR code or putting a badge in your blog or website.
I think it's an awesome idea! Stick with it!