Every time I hand out a business card to someone, I think about how soon after that it will become landfill. Business cards are one of the things, like fax machines, that should have outlived their useful life a long time ago but they hang on. We've had the technology to eliminate business cards for a long time. Remember "beaming" your contact info from your Palm Pilot? Do you still attach your vCard to your outgoing emails? Does your phone have Bump on it?
There was a time when a business card was very fancy and expensive in order to make an impression on its recipient. Then it became cool to have a card with something crossed out and corrected - a sign that you were moving up so fast the printer couldn't keep up. And of course there are the foreign rituals surrounding the exchange of cards in ceremonies more complex than some of our weddings were.
The truth is that we use those business cards to hold information long enough for us to get back to our computers where we type the relevant information into our contact manager du jour and then, for a brief moment, we consider what to do with the card now that it no longer has a use in our lives. For a long time, I kept them. I had big fat three ring binders with special plastic business card holder pages. At one point I moved my office and didn't take the binders with me immediately. I planned to go back for them later. Months passed before I thought of them again. The thought was prompted by the stack of new cards that had accumulated on my desk waiting to be carefully inserted into the next empty slots in the least full binder. I tossed the whole thing in the trash and then I found the binders and tossed them out too. No loss of information. Just a sense of nostalgia for a guilded age that had passed.
Nowadays, I have a new dilemma. Someone gives me their card and I immediately scan it into my phone using one of the many apps designed for the purpose (ScanBizCards, SamCard, CardMunch). The physical card has already been reduced to zero value to me, but it's still worth the quarter that this person paid to have it printed. Do I give it back?
There was a time when a business card was very fancy and expensive in order to make an impression on its recipient. Then it became cool to have a card with something crossed out and corrected - a sign that you were moving up so fast the printer couldn't keep up. And of course there are the foreign rituals surrounding the exchange of cards in ceremonies more complex than some of our weddings were.
The truth is that we use those business cards to hold information long enough for us to get back to our computers where we type the relevant information into our contact manager du jour and then, for a brief moment, we consider what to do with the card now that it no longer has a use in our lives. For a long time, I kept them. I had big fat three ring binders with special plastic business card holder pages. At one point I moved my office and didn't take the binders with me immediately. I planned to go back for them later. Months passed before I thought of them again. The thought was prompted by the stack of new cards that had accumulated on my desk waiting to be carefully inserted into the next empty slots in the least full binder. I tossed the whole thing in the trash and then I found the binders and tossed them out too. No loss of information. Just a sense of nostalgia for a guilded age that had passed.Nowadays, I have a new dilemma. Someone gives me their card and I immediately scan it into my phone using one of the many apps designed for the purpose (ScanBizCards, SamCard, CardMunch). The physical card has already been reduced to zero value to me, but it's still worth the quarter that this person paid to have it printed. Do I give it back?
Enjoy reading our blogs? 
Powered by Compendium
Comments for I Just Got New Business Cards!