I'm the (solo) founder at Cardbox. Happy to answer any questions and respond to feedback!
After growing frustrated from outdated, incomplete, and duplicate contact information that had accumulated over the years, I realized that the concept of contact management has become really dated.
While we've seen a lot of innovation in email and calendar apps, the same can't be said about contacts apps—even though we all use contacts, and the process of contact management hasn't changed since the first smartphones.
At the same time, the detrimental effects of social media on mental health, relationships, privacy, and politics have become quite clear, and many people want to cut down on their social media usage. The problem is that when you leave social media platforms, you also lose your social networks (note the distinction).
Then it hit me. By combining contacts and social networking, I realized most issues with both could be fixed, and in hindsight combining them just makes so much sense. Why should you manage someone else’s contact information in this age of connectivity?
In short, Cardbox is a next-generation contacts app where everyone controls their own card at all times. When you make changes to your info, those changes get instantly pushed to the device address books of your connections.
It's the one central place to stay connected to the people in your life. Whether it's family or friends, classmates or colleagues, teammates or clients; you can simply connect on Cardbox and exchange the contact information necessary to stay in touch both online and offline (this includes the messaging apps and social media you use).
My goal with Cardbox is to create a paradigm shift in the way we connect digitally, to become the first place to connect when you meet someone. Instead of creating a contact on the spot, or spelling out your usernames on services X and Y, you easily connect on Cardbox and instantly see where else you can find and contact each other—now and in the future.
Let me know what you think!
It's hard for me to say as I have no experience with Android development so far. The app is built using React Native, so most of the code will work on Android.
It's just a matter of getting it to work, then making it feel at home and handling the unique challenges on Android. This is why I say this summer; this gives me a couple of months to figure it out.
As with any social network, the hard part is getting lots of people to use it. There's no benefit to me if I have a card but none of my friends do. How are you going to tackle this problem?
I'd really like to use this kind of product at the company I work for. We have a fair amount of people churn, with contractors coming and going. It would be great if my address book could auto-update with their details. Do you have any plans for some kind of company tier, where you could add/connect cards to a company on behalf of the user?
> As with any social network, the hard part is getting lots of people to use it. There's no benefit to me if I have a card but none of my friends do. How are you going to tackle this problem?
The way I see it, a social media platform only offers value if you have people actively posting content. Cardbox is different in that it already offers benefit if you have just one connection; that's one contact you never have to manage again. And this is true for every connection you make.
Right now, it's not yet a full replacement of your old address book, but rather a utility to modernize it, bit by bit. As the user base grows and the app becomes available on all platforms, it can become that replacement.
If everyone manages to just convince their closest circles (and/or people that change phone numbers or addresses a lot e.g. due to travel) to use the app, at some point enough people will have it so that it can unlock its full potential in situations of meeting new people.
To promote this, there's the referral program that rewards free Pro. Hoping early adopters want to set up the app for family members etc.
> Do you have any plans for some kind of company tier, where you could add/connect cards to a company on behalf of the user?
Absolutely, lots of potential there; company cards and business cards are on the roadmap: https://cardbox.app/roadmap
> Also, where is the data kept? Is this GDPR safe? I'm in the UK and I'd like to keep this company/user data somewhere safe :)
It's stored on AWS in the Ireland region. Of course, Cardbox is GDPR compliant; privacy is a core focus :) See https://cardbox.app/privacy
For pricing, and I understand you may be bootstrapped and seeking to be cash-positive, 100 contacts limit seems really low, especially given a selling point on your website that this can be for quickly adding new contacts/business cards/high number of low familiarity/frequency contacts. Perhaps make fees for power user features, like groups, or very high contact lists, or corporate use cases?
For vanity url usernames, I'm not sure if this works or just fragments namespaces more. I have my own firstlast name .com, Twitter and handful of other social media vanity url accounts. But names are not unique being first mover is. My vote on the jury for this feature is out.
Thanks! Android is planned. You add someone by searching their name, clicking their link, or using Nearby which shows people who have the app open near you using Bluetooth.
> 100 contacts limit seems really low
I think after connecting to people 100 times you'll feel like paying one cup of coffee a month is worth the value you get out of the app.
> For vanity url usernames, I'm not sure if this works or just fragments namespaces more.
Not quite sure what you mean, but usernames are primarily intended so you can put a pretty, memorable link in the bio of your social accounts or on your business card.
If Cardbox becomes the initial point of digital connection, then here's where a good username will matter most; your other accounts are easily found anyway as they're linked on your card.
Making usernames work like domain registrations also solves the problem of usernames being squatted, or taken and abandoned. It's also an incentive to keep paying. I believe it's a good solution :)
I would like an app where I can manage my friends / family lists, and then be able to text multiple people at once, invite them to events, etc. Those are the useful features I see from social networks, but are not well replicated right now outside of Facebook.
I typically manage all my contacts thru Google, and that has some features for merging duplicates, portability across devices/gmail, and also some list features.
I imagine it's also the first alternative to Facebook for people who simply want to stay in touch digitally, despite changing online and offline environments.
If Cardbox becomes ubiquitous, manual contact management for everyone you know will be a thing of the past. You will always have access to the latest contact info of your connections, always a recent photo, always access to their preferred messaging and social apps.
Anyway, this is early days and those group features are always possible in the future. :)
