Will we ever kill the business card?
Let’s say you are attending a TEDx event, where speakers from different fields come to talk about the latest technologies, their achievements, and magnificent ideas. Yes, the talks are great, but we are all here to network, and the time has come! You start going around the room, talking to a few people, and the moment of truth is here, did you bring your business cards?
You are now frantically searching for them in your pockets, your bag, your wallet, but no luck. Isn’t it such an awkward situation when people are handing you their business card and you have to apologize for not having yours? They either think you are careless for not bringing your cards to TEDx, or that you only have a few and don’t think they are important enough to hand them a card.
A great scenario here is that you did bring your business cards with you, and your networking skills are on fire! You are ecstatic about the number of people you met and the cards you got (awesome event!). But let’s be real, it only gets worse when you head back to your office and stare a the pile of cards you got (let’s hope you remember the names of the people you want to get in touch with). What to do now?!
Our post was inspired by a recent article by Scott Kirsner.
These little rectangles accumulate in pockets, purses, and desk drawers. In the 20th century, we knew what to do with them: staple them to other pieces of paper and insert those pieces into a device called a Rolodex. The number of Rolodexes on a person’s desk was an indicator of power and influence.
In the 21st century, though, we want phone numbers and e-mail addresses to be digitally accessible. I have been exploring the best ways to accomplish that – by scanning cards, photographing them with a mobile phone, mailing them to someone else to deal with, or trying to avoid exchanging cards entirely. The only strategy I have eschewed is typing the information in myself.
What I personally do is take a photo of the card, email it to myself with the contact’s name and company in the subject line. Absurdly manual, and I need a better solution.
Thanks to Scott’s diligent research, we have options:
CardMunch (it’s free):
Unfortunately, it’s only available for the iPhone, with no plans announced for an Android version. Given a decent picture of a business card, CardMunch not only returns perfect data in the proper fields, but it also tries to find the person’s profile on LinkedIn, the business networking site. (LinkedIn bought the company in January 2011.) The app gives you the ability to connect with the person via LinkedIn, and also to export their contact info to your iPhone’s address book. CardMunch doesn’t bother trying to automatically recognize the text on the card; instead it sends the digital image to an army of self-employed typists around the world who act as your outsourced secretaries in exchange for a few pennies per card. To ensure accuracy, each card is typed in by as many as four workers, and the results compared. CardMunch promises a 24-hour turnaround time, though the actual results can be much quicker.
ScanBizCards (priced at $6.99):
It first tries to decipher the text on a card. Then, you can either make the corrections and fill in any missing data, or you can request that someone else do it for you. (The app comes with a couple of free transcription credits; after that, transcriptions cost 18 cents per card.) When the app failed to notice that a person’s office was in Cambridge, and missed the company’s name because it was printed as a swirly logo, I requested a transcription. It came back within 10 minutes, with everything entered perfectly.
CamCard (priced at $6.99):
It doesn’t include the human transcription option. Both CamCard and ScanBizCards back up a copy of your data on their secure websites, and they also both offer free versions of their apps that have limited functionality.
CloudContacts:
You toss the business cards you would like to have digitized into an envelope, mail them to the company, and they scan and correct them for you. You can then download a file from CloudContacts’ website that can be imported into whatever software you use for managing your contacts. (CloudContacts will even transcribe notes you have written on the back of a card – as long as they are legible.) The company charges $29.95 to digitize 100 cards.
The challenge here is accumulation:
If you keep up with cards and scan them as you get them, any of the mobile apps will probably work just fine. If you let them accumulate and don’t have time to process them, it’s hard to beat the CloudContacts solution.
Scott and Sid Viswanathan (co-founder of CardMunch) both agree:
That paper business cards may be like handshakes – a central and ineradicable part of the ritual of meeting someone new. “We’ve been very focused on not breaking the social protocol of exchanging business cards,’’ says Viswanathan, who is now a product manager at LinkedIn. “Even though the mobile device is becoming the center of your contact universe, the new Rolodex, it still seems like the most frictionless way to exchange information today is the business card.’’
What do you think? Is it just a matter of time for business cards to become obsolete? Or are they here to stay?
To read the Scott Kirsner article, click here.
from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/will-we-ever-kill-the-business-card/