But honestly, I think it's a terrible concept. (I don't like to say so, because I like entrepreneurs, and want to encourage you, but I also care about giving the best feedback I am able.) Business cards have an important function in the world, and they're very low-hassle relative to how useful they are. Meanwhile, they're very entrenched: the physical card is a strong social convention, and it's very hard to change that. I would not use this product because I suspect that many of the people I would meet would find it unprofessional.
We know about the important function of paper cards in the world. When people ask us who our competitors are, we respond with 'paper cards'. The only we we will solve the business card problem is by playing well with these paper cards.
What you see on E today is the basic system we've designed to handle contact information with an additional visual layer. Features to handle paper cards - and mimic paper cards for that matter are things we're working on passionately. We know what it feels like to get a great looking business card, with a nice choice of paper, excellent typography, etc. But I'm convinced in time we will find an equally attractive solution - though it will not be overnight. The transitions from vinyl to cd to mp3, or printed books to ebooks have also take years.
Our added benefits however (stored geolocation of meetings, synched notes, etc.) are features we're getting great feedback on.
The fact is that the purely utilitarian aspect of business cards is a very minor element of their continued use. As a way of giving somebody your phone number, they're absurdly overevolved and ripe for supercession. But as a medium of social display, it'll be a lot harder to shake loose of them.
The video addressed this concern ("compatible with real business cards") which is the sign of a well thought out marketing video.
The best company I know that do this is Think Feel Know (http://www.thinkfeelknow.com/). The starting point for their business (disclaimer - I've worked with them) is understanding communication styles, since each of us is a combination of Thinking, Feeling, and Knowing - usually with a predominance of one style over the others. The different styles are linked to decision making, as well as marketing tools like shapes and colours.
Ask one of their team for a business card, and they will produce a handful, turn them over to show you a group of cards that are blue, red, and green on the back, and ask you to choose one. The contact information on the front is the same; better believe that when you are forced to select one colour, the next question out of your mouth is 'what does that mean?', and the answer will explain their business and how they might be able to help your organisation. Very memorable.
We haven't had bad experiences with our name so far, but we're well aware that some people might make that association.
This counts for phone to phone sharing, but also for sending your card to an email. Recipients will get your visual card, and a vcard as attachment.
If you have any time for this kind of thing, maybe the draft of vCard 4.0 would be of interest to you. We added synchronization features, and there is an extension being written for social networking.
Are you guys planning on allowing users to customize their cards to match their actual business card?
Either way good luck taking on Bump, it's good to have a couple options in the marketplace.
Yes, a Card Editor is definitely in the planning.
But I'm not sure how to support it on the backend.
Found a bug: if you have two phone numbers, only the first one shows up on the card.
For the time being we only show one phone number on the card (we picked a size that shows up correctly on all mobile screens, not just iPhone). That doesn't mean that the info doesn't get shared though.
I thought of the exact same idea about 3 years ago. I didn't pursue it due to other circumstances (i.e. being far too busy), so I'm glad to see someone is taking it forward. I wish you the best of luck. The quality of the service and not to mention your website looks stunning. And that's what it takes to really make it!
1. Displayed business card should also show QR code for others to scan in. 2. App could display QR code for others to download app instantly. 3. Not sure if it does already (I am on Android), but it would be cool if the emailed card had a link back to the app /site.
The Android app is currently in alpha stage. We'd love more testers though, firing an email to android@mynameise.com would make us pretty happy!
http://paulstamatiou.com/thoughts-on-physical-social-network...
Grats on the new angle!
Point being, letting me install the app on my device ASAP is critical
And email? Because that's the common denominator on all paper cards that accepts (html) emails with attachments (vcard).
I would suggest to make this better would be to make it a hell of a lot faster to receive cards;
Allow all the functionality you currently have (i.e. write something on the contact, add to contacts etc) -- but also allow you to push cards into a To-Be-Sorted bucket of a recipient.
THis would allow people to push their cards into the bucket of another in 15 seconds and walk away.
You dont want to bog down interactions with people for long as they are trying to share the card/contact and move on with their convo or move to other people.
I would also recommend the ability to have an event bucket/tag that anyone can see and let anyone push their card into that bucket.
For example - I go to a mixer "Cool things" and when I get there (gps recognizes I have arrived) my card shows up in the "cool things" mixer directory of people who have arrived/are there.
Then later - I can go back and look through the bucket and select the people I interacted with and grab their cards. I can do this after the fact when I have time and it wont interfere with the flow of any conversations.
A bit of copy editing: "... hand out your contact information to whomever needs it." A lot of people make this mistake, but actually "whoever" is correct here. The case of the relative pronoun is governed by its role in the subordinate clause, not the main clause; the object of the preposition "to" is not the relative pronoun itself, but the entire clause "whoever needs it". "Whoever", being the subject of the verb "needs", is correctly in the nominative case.
Although I usually don't put much importance on startup names, "E" seems awkward. This is coming from someone that uses e (the text-editor) and whenever someone asks what editor I use, I say "e", look at a blank face, then reply "it's basically Textmate for Windows".
If the other person does not have your app and isn't comfortable about sharing their email address, they can just photograph your card. Later they can download your app if interested and the app can use OCR or bar code scanning to identify the original e-card.
