ReadWriteWeb

"From paper cards to email contacts." This is Part Two of a two-part post. The first part is here.

As noted earlier, I had the opportunity to put e-business cards to a real-world test this past week at the DEMO conference. While I found a somewhat workable solution for sending out my contact info to others, I still collected a large stack of paper business cards from the people I met. These cards had to be digitized in order for them to be of any use to me. While people with administrative assistants are fortunate to have this tiresome data entry process handled for them, those of us without are stuck doing it ourselves. We can either sit at the keyboard for hours or use a scanner. Shouldn't there be a better way?

Part One: "Here's My Card"

This past week, I had the opportunity to put e-business cards to a real-world test thanks to a recent trip to the DEMO 09 conference in Palm Desert, California. You would think that if any group of people would have adopted the electronic business card model for exchanging their contact data, it would be the technology community. Yet at conferences like DEMO and all the others, printed paper cards are still exchanged. Why is that?

The popular and quirky MOO.com is a print shop providing stickers, postcards, business cards and personal introduction cards, which are narrower and longer cards. The products can feature artistic images you select from the site's offerings or can be printed using photos you upload to the service. Notable for promoting the artwork of hip designers, the MOO service is a favorite among the young and hip as well as among those who want to stand out as being non-traditional.

In this web-enabled world of ours, you have to wonder why business cards are still so popular. Shouldn't there be a better way? A number of startups have attempted to address this problem with ingenious solutions that range from iPhone apps to custom URLs. Others are calling for the use of QR Codes for mobile data exchange. Unfortunately, no one service has hit the sweet spot just yet, but newcomer "E" thinks they have it figured out. Will "E" succeed where the others have failed? Or is this one industry that refuses to become digitized?

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?