Photo from Nancyscola
It’s amusing to see how many brands are getting on the “Social Network” bandwagon, this time with Staples selling “Social Networking Cards“. I first learned about this from fellow analyst Julie Katz who is equally perplexed as I was.
Essentially (if you read the fine print) it’s a regular business card that can link to your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Friendfeed, Plurk or whatever else you’re doing online. I expect to see some of these from my kid sisters friends, who are just leaving the college scene.
I can imagine some college bound kids going to the bar with these cards and exchanging these “social network” cards with links to their Facebook and Myspace accounts.
Whatever happened to the Palm Pilot? I thought we were going to do away completely with printed business cards and ‘beam’ our contact info to each other, I used to do it, but not with current cell phones.
Thinking ‘mid term’ I’ve had my blog URL on my current and previous business card (and prominently featured on my resume), it’s something I expect to be part of my career.
I guess if I wanted to take this all the way, I should update my white pages listing in the physical phonebook with my twitter address.
My business card lists my Skype, AIM, Yahoo and Twitter handles, along with my email and phone. Given that’s the realm I work and play in, made sense to do so :-).
Jeremiah,
This is hilarious because I was just griping to my friend about how amazing my Handspring Visor was (early Palm competitor for those that don’t remember) when it came to swapping information back in 2000!
I think these business cards are absolutely brilliant though. Besides the margins (50 cards for 5 bucks when VistaPrint will send me 5x as many for 1/2 the price), it allows younger kids to communicate in the world they feel comfortable in.
If you’re 18, there’s a certain level of risk (on multiple levels) involved in exchanging phone numbers when you meet someone. But swap profile names, and you can find out just about everything about the other person before wasting your time on a boring phone call. And if they don’t leave you alone, you can just defriend them.
Also, I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s given out my business card to a new contact, instead of my personal cell phone #, because I wanted that extra level of screening….I was fine with them communicating with “work Tom”, but not “real Tom”. Maybe there’s something to the idea of kid’s still having a little bit of seperation between online and IRL.
In the end, they’re taking a nice profit from facilitating what people are doing away.
As a college student, I would laugh at anyone that gave me one of these or suggested I get one. And in my current role at a Fortune 500 company, one of my roles is to help bring Social Networking to the Enterprise.
I’m sorry, but why? I enjoy calling people a lot more than “posting to their wall”…