The Slow Death of the Traditional Business Card (wsj.com) 77
Traditional business cards -- dropping off for years -- might finally be folding given the Covid-19 pandemic, as many professionals worked from home, switched jobs and attended conferences and meetings virtually. From a report: Even now, with in-person schmoozing on the rise, many networkers are in no mood to return to what they see as the germ-swapping, environmentally unfriendly and laborious tradition of exchanging physical cards, only to manually input the fine print into phones later. Instead, they are turning to hybrid or fully virtual solutions: physical cards with QR codes, scannable digital cards or chips embedded in physical items that allow people to share contact details with a tap. Mr. Peterson [technology chief at Boingo Wireless; anecdote in the story] got his card from Dangerous Things, a human implant technology company whose chip can be inserted with a syringe -- the company suggests body piercers and other pros for the task. Mr. Peterson asked a neighbor with a medical degree. If, say, a phone number changes, the chip can be updated online. But the post-paper world is hardly friction-free. Atlas Vernier rejected paper business cards in favor of wearing an NFC ring with a chip inside. Once scanned, the 21-year-old's information pops up in the recipient's phone.
Mx. Vernier, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, described often having to slightly move the ring around in search of the "sweet spot" of a phone's NFC reader. "That's the way technology works -- it always works until someone's looking." When an attendee at a recent racial-equity conference asked Robert F. Smith for his contact information, the private-equity billionaire furnished a white plastic card with a gold QR code printed on it. The guest held her phone above the card to scan it. Nothing happened. For the next minute or so, she positioned her phone at various distances from the card while Mr. Smith, the chief executive of Vista Equity Partners, tried different grips and angles. When that didn't work, Mr. Smith pulled out a different card with a black QR code. Success. Mr. Smith was unbowed. "I appreciate good sense tech solutions," he said in a written statement later. "I don't miss paper cards at all."
Mx. Vernier, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, described often having to slightly move the ring around in search of the "sweet spot" of a phone's NFC reader. "That's the way technology works -- it always works until someone's looking." When an attendee at a recent racial-equity conference asked Robert F. Smith for his contact information, the private-equity billionaire furnished a white plastic card with a gold QR code printed on it. The guest held her phone above the card to scan it. Nothing happened. For the next minute or so, she positioned her phone at various distances from the card while Mr. Smith, the chief executive of Vista Equity Partners, tried different grips and angles. When that didn't work, Mr. Smith pulled out a different card with a black QR code. Success. Mr. Smith was unbowed. "I appreciate good sense tech solutions," he said in a written statement later. "I don't miss paper cards at all."
Shame - they had one good use (Score:5, Funny)
They allowed you to take cards from annoying people and dismiss them immediately by saying "Of course, I'll call you back. (Now leave me alone)".
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My Preferred Response (Score:1)
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Re:Shame - they had one good use (Score:5, Informative)
Not necessarily, they were useful for certain people. Before the internet, contact databases, etc. Take the card, stick it in your file, and the next time you need to buy widgets you look it up again. All the useful info is right there: phone number, email, even a mailing address. Handy for looking up your lawyer, insurance agent, etc.
The snag comes when a company decides that just about everyone needs a business card. The sales people needed them, and contacts within manufacturing and procurement. But the remaining desk jockeys really didn't have as much need. Though is was prestigious for a time, until literally everyone had one. Still, it was nearly mandatory in Japan, if you didn't have a business card to hand a Japanese business rep then you were assumed to be highly unimportant. It is a bit annoying that a meeting with 6 people you end getting 1 card that might be useful and 5 you know you will never use (the contact's boss, his director, the sales rep, the regional director, the new guy who was brought along to learn the ropes).
But today; add them to the contact's list then toss the paper.
I think that since the 80s, I've handed out maybe 10 of my own in total. I've been 12 years on my current job and never even ordered business cards here. The ones I have from the past are bookmarks, places to scribble reminders, bent/taped/cut to create SD card holders, etc. Of course you can't just order a batch of 10, they have to come in chunks of 500...
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Not necessarily, they were useful for certain people. Before the internet, contact databases, etc. Take the card, stick it in your file, and the next time you need to buy widgets you look it up again. All the useful info is right there: phone number, email, even a mailing address. Handy for looking up your lawyer, insurance agent, etc.
...and when you actually did, you'd find out that they'd moved on and no longer working there. Been there, done that. No way to update the information on a paper card (short of doing it manually with a pen).
Other than that, I fully agree. I used to have a couple of business cards sorted into card binders and boxes by topic and by priority. By priority, I mean: Box A = people I frequently need to call, Box B = people I might sometimes want to call, Box C = Well, that would be the "Don't call us, we'll call y
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I had internet in the early 80s. I meant mass market internet.
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Not necessarily, they were useful for certain people. Before the internet, contact databases, etc. Take the card, stick it in your file, and the next time you need to buy widgets you look it up again. All the useful info is right there: phone number, email, even a mailing address. Handy for looking up your lawyer, insurance agent, etc.
The snag comes when a company decides that just about everyone needs a business card. The sales people needed them, and contacts within manufacturing and procurement. But the remaining desk jockeys really didn't have as much need. Though is was prestigious for a time, until literally everyone had one. Still, it was nearly mandatory in Japan, if you didn't have a business card to hand a Japanese business rep then you were assumed to be highly unimportant. It is a bit annoying that a meeting with 6 people you end getting 1 card that might be useful and 5 you know you will never use (the contact's boss, his director, the sales rep, the regional director, the new guy who was brought along to learn the ropes).
But today; add them to the contact's list then toss the paper.
I think that since the 80s, I've handed out maybe 10 of my own in total. I've been 12 years on my current job and never even ordered business cards here. The ones I have from the past are bookmarks, places to scribble reminders, bent/taped/cut to create SD card holders, etc. Of course you can't just order a batch of 10, they have to come in chunks of 500...
The thing is, the sales profession, as it's dying has become so transient.
In the 80's, when you met Jeff from Widgets Incorporated, Jeff made an effort to get to know you, understand what you wanted and Jeff generally stayed with the company for a while. You could usually call Jeff and get what you needed.
Now sales tends to be a minimum wage job, at best propped up by commission but usually not enough to make it worth it. So sales people move on after a few months to a different role, either somethin
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Well for us, it's sales to other companies and big budget items, so sales does the old style of sales. And we buy in bulk from others. 12 years ago, but not now, we had an Arrow representative in our own office (not a full cubicle) just for sales, ordering, support, and I've never seen something like that before. Also the Silicon Valley location often meant we could ask for samples and get them within an hour or two which was handy ("oh, look, Bob is local and is just a support rep, but let's give him a c
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I used to print my resume on the back side so contacts had context for why I was valuable.
I thought business cards died 10+ years ago? Email and texting killed them.
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Hmm, how long is that resume to fit on a business card? Though it would be a good trick for a company that dealt in high quality micro-printing.
Business cards are sort of dead, depending. International companies still have them from what I can tell. Before the stopped being common they were starting to include things like QR codes for quick scanning.
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The small space forces you to list only the essentials. Employers don't care what you did 20+ years ago, only the last ~5.
And yeah, a tiny font helps but you need SOME readability.
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They are also useful in regapping my lawnmower. The distance between the magneto and the flywheel is exactly the depth of a standard business card. It's rather handy for that.
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QR code (Score:2)
Re:QR code (Score:5, Funny)
I just created a QR code with all of my business profile into,
Company name, website, phone/fax etc.
If someone says can I have your contact info, they just scan it and add it.
I recommend Defcon as a great place to take advantage of the convenience of QR codes...
funny, I was just thinking of Defcon (Score:2)
Funny, I was just thinking of the cards I gave people at Defcon a couple weeks ago, mostly right after my talk.
One thing cards can have that most people don't put in QR or NFC contacts is context and a call to action. A card can say "call me for web application security testing" or whatever. Along with general branding, indications of who you are in terms of what's important to them - not just your name, which is kinda random, unimportant data in that regard.
Tatoo a QR code? (Score:2)
Tattoo your wrist! then make sure you never loose the domain name it points to!
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...then make sure you never loose the domain name it points to!
Loosing your domain name is TIGHT! [wonders if anyone recognizes the reference].
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Nonsense! It'll be barely an inconvenience!
Too much time wasted over the last 2, well make that 20 years.
BTW I feel for the poor soul searching for that. Though it can't be worse than me typing "man pee" without thinking (yes, there's a program called pee).
Re: Tatoo a QR code? (Score:2)
Maybe a link to your LinkedIn profile?
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Talk about extreme trust in the cloud... tatoo a URL you do not control to some social networking website that later gets bought by some megacorp and they mess it up then later sell it.... 20 years later you end up with your tattoo linking to a porn website or a pedophile who stole your identity.
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Beat me to it.
Pour one out for the best scene about business cards ever put to film. [youtube.com]
Because technology makes things easier (Score:2)
Re:Because technology makes things easier (Score:5, Funny)
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A business card embiggens the smallest man!
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Yeah, a card is quite handy. Plus, you can make notes on the card - if you were checking out a prospective client, you can make a note to follow up with them on the card itself, or make notes about what the meeting was about so when you call them you know the context in which you got the card.
The only downsides is that few people I know of actually go through an entire box of business cards - when you get them made up it seems they only come in quantities of 1000 or so and by the time the information is obs
Re: Because technology makes things easier (Score:1)
Yeah - I miss that. I wish they'd invent computers you can type on, then we wouldn't have to keep our scanned cards and our additional notes in different places.
Not dead yet, just smells that way! (Score:2)
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What? You mean that when my kids got a business card from a 10-year-old that advertised him as "Prince Jango Fett: lemonade, magic tricks", he probably wasn't really Prince Jango Fett?
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Shut up (Score:4, Insightful)
First, most of the article reads like a slashvertisement.
Second, no, I'm not taking "what's current in business" advice from a 21 year old. I've had 21 year olds confidently INSIST that "nobody uses email anymore".
Of COURSE.
Personally, I find business cards a tedious but least-objectionable solution to giving/getting basic contact information
- when standards, tech, and media are constantly changing. I'm not downloading some new dot.com's stupid fucking app just so I can read your hand/rfid chip.
- in conjunction with actual documents, particularly when you're handing them to someone not the final recipient. Remember that people still use those pretty widely in business?
- and your QR code is on what, specifically? (Too many people don't put actual INFO on them anyway. No, I'm not going to your rando e-data website, thanks.
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The guy offers 4 replacements:
* physical cards with QR codes -> a business card
* scannable digital cards -> a business card
* chips embedded in physical items -> a funny-shaped business card like the bloc of paper or pen with address of a hotel
* a human implant technology -> agreed, that not a business card! But what's the point? You could embed the RFID tag in anything else like the items mentioned above, and who wants to be the creepy guy who has an RFID implant, except to showcase at the annua
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I use them now and then. The financial advisor to my mom says "you have my number? Here." and hands me a card. I get the contact info from the dentist when the next appointment time is written on it. And so on. I don't have to fumble with the phone to remember how to turn on NFC or how to transfer that contact to my real contact list (certainly never keep it on the phone or it all vanishes when the phone dies unexpectedly, and the backup data is in some bizarre format that the new phone can't decipher).
It
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I'm in my 40s and in a leadership role at my company; I refuse to use or accept business cards from anyone and have for more than 20 years. There is absolutely no reason, whatsoever, that anyone should use them in 2022.
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Cool story bro.
Now if you'd tell us why you think this way, your post *might* be useful instead of merely wasting electrons.
it always works until someone's looking (Score:3)
Must be a quantum effect.
Considerations (Score:3, Informative)
Many Android phones read NFC chips, often centered or in a corner. However my SO's phone does not.
Many iPhones don't have NFC, only more recent ones.
As such I don't really use/offer my NFC chip for contact info. QR codes have become more ubiquitous and less tech savvy folks are accustomed to using them now since so many restaurants did during the pandemic.
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iPhone 6 and later - anything that supports Apple pay has the right hardware, though it's way more recent that their NFC readers could do any other industry standard stuff.
Still QR codes are way simpler and just work.
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iPhone 6 and later
So any iPhone from 2014 or later has NFC. Seems kind of funny, given Android's track record with regards to OS support lifetime, that the OP chose to draw that particular distinction.
Interestingly enough, iPhone 6 just got a critical security update... so apparently people are still using them.
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Many Android phones read NFC chips, often centered or in a corner. However my SO's phone does not.
Many iPhones don't have NFC, only more recent ones.
As such I don't really use/offer my NFC chip for contact info. QR codes have become more ubiquitous and less tech savvy folks are accustomed to using them now since so many restaurants did during the pandemic.
QR codes and NFC are an even worse application for something that we don't really need any more.
During the pandemic, a lot of restaurants went "menuless" which meant at the table there was a QR code you scanned with your phone. They worked, at best, maybe half the time. The laminated surface reflected too much light or the sun got in the way, the QR code faded, so on and so forth and even if you managed to scan it, half the time it wouldn't open because your ISP blocked it because "media.randomhost.quhgo
Gold QR code (Score:2)
What is this guy? A pimp?
Japan (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Japan (Score:3)
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And the same happens in Korea, Taiwan, China, and most of East Asia today. At the beginning of a meeting, everyone exchanges business cards.
The article appears to have been written by someone who doesn't know much about the topic, didn't bother to do any research, and only writes about his limited personal view of the world.
But, but . . . QR CODE!
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It's important to receive the card properly and read over it fully so you don't insult the person giving you the card.
That's a terrifying thought if you live in Japan, because you can now go to prison for insulting someone. There may literally be Business Card Police departments forming. I'm only half-joking.
no business card in years (Score:4, Insightful)
I have not had a business card in years. There is no way I'm scanning any QR code either, my 10 year old rick rolls people with a QR code all the time, but it could lead to anything.
If I care to, I'll give you an email address where you can ask me for more info if you need it.
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'll give you an email address where you can ask me for more info if you need it.
Isn't the entire point of a card to make sure they don't misspill your email address?
What am I missing here?
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If I'm willing to give you an email address to contact me then I'm willing to spell it out too. Though its easy and I know you can handle it.
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In other words, instead of an interaction that takes a couple of seconds, you're willing to spend a few minutes making sure the other guy has copied it down correctly.
Also making the assumption that the other guy will take the time to create a new contact in his address book, take time to spell out your name and company and manually enter in all the information with yo
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I have a small number of really nice PCB ones I made for special occasions, like job interviews. They can act as RFID cards with the addition of a single chip, or they have a QR code as well as my basic details. I also put rulers on the edges and some useful info like the phonetic alphabet.
Only for very special people though.
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QR codes can hold more than just URLs. I used to have a business card with a QR on the back that encoded all data on the front as a vCard. Even 10 years ago smartphones were able to recognize it and offer to create a new contact. It makes for a larger QR than is typical, but with phone camera resolutions these days that shouldn't be an issue.
Decent ones (Score:3)
Years ago I ordered cards from VistaPrint and they were great - nice stock, slightly raised print. About 5c a piece and totally worth it.
So I reordered a few years later for 7c each (OK, fine). The inkjet lines were obvious and it was the "thick paper" you can get at Walmart. Terrible. They were cut straight but straight into the recycling bin - way to sink your business selling quality.
I'll try a print shop in the nearest small city, I thought. 70c a piece. Wait, what? Plus a $50 set up charge.
Anyway I bought a color laser printer for less and found some very thick 95% precut stock and it's better than VistaPrint. I put a VCF QR on the back. And can run a batch when info changes (no more FAX).
But I would still rather have some raised-ink cards.
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VistaPrint had raised print? Used them since their beginning, never noticed raised print.
Silian Rail. Raised lettering, pale nimbus white...
The ultimate evil (Score:2)
Take a card from one person and give it to another when asked to exchange cards. Rinse-repeat tens of times at a big event...
Handy to carry at least one (Score:1)
other uses (Score:2)
So long and thanks for all the fish (Score:2)
I've used personal checks more recently than a business card.
While my company still has a process for ordering and I'm entitled for my level, I don't thing I've requested them for at least 3 rebranding cycles
No way, opposite for me (Score:2)
I actually printed out business cards to promote my photography, keep some in my pocket when out shooting, way faster to just pull one out and give it to anyone inquiring about my photos.
sure, because searching for a qr-code (Score:2)
Serious question (Score:3)
Mx. Vernier
What does that abbreviation stand for, because the first thing it makes me think of is this. [wikipedia.org]
Hygiene (Score:2)
Wait? They name Hygiene as a point against traditional business cards and then suggest letting everyone swipe their dirty phone over my hand/arm/forehead/shoulder/ass (or wherever I got that NFC Chip implanted)? That is in no way an improvement.
Useful hedge against retention policy (Score:2)
Oh no (Score:2)
Simple solution (Score:2)