Last week I met up with my old colleagues at a Happy Hour 2.0 in La Jolla. It was the perfect opportunity to catch up with them since I recently started a new job and to mingle with other marketers, developers, and other web people. The only drawback was that I didn’t have my new business cards or any moo cards to hand out. Fortunately, HeyStephanie.com was easy for my new friends to remember and I was able to get by with giving my email address.
Meanwhile, I still don’t have any new business cards so in the interim, I had to find a solution to my business card dilemma. Luckily, I stumbled across MyDropcard.com which lets you easily share your contact info with your phone—for free!
Once you’ve registered and entered all of your contact information at the site, you’re good to go. As if that wasn’t cool enough, you can create two separate profiles; one for business and the other for personal contacts.
When you meet someone new, simply text “drop” and their email address to “41411″ and Dropcard will deliver your contact info directly to their email. You can even add your social network profiles on your dropcard (i.e. LinkedIn) or your blog.
Dropcard also has convenient text messaging shortcuts so you don’t have to waste so much time texting. For example, you can replace the “@” symbol when typing your friend’s email address with a space and Dropcard will know what you mean. And if your friend’s email is on Gmail, even better! Text “drop” and their email address without “@gmail.com” and you’re done. For more ways to cut your text time, check out more Dropcard shortcuts here.
Not only is this handy, it sure beats carrying 100+ business cards to hand out at a conference. On top of that, soon they’ll be offering users more features (i.e. personal logo, attachments, statistics, etc.) for $4.99 a month. That might be helpful for the hardcore networkers.
So what about you? Is there a different service that you use to send contact info to colleagues through your phone? What would you do in this type of situation?
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Mike Avila 10.19.08 at 3:45 am
Great idea! I already signed up…
Stephanie Gulley 10.19.08 at 4:06 am
@Mike Avila: Cool! I just realized that when Dropcard sends the contact info to your friend, it includes a .vcf for download too. Nice! :]
Jun Loayza 10.23.08 at 5:46 pm
You know what! I actually thought of this idea last week while driving to an event. I was like, “Oh mayan… I forgot my business cards! I wish there was a way for me to automatically send my biz card through my phone to a person I met.” And behold, they just came out with it.
They seem to have a compelling business model too - premium features. Looks like everyone is adopting the “premium” biz model.
You are one good source for social media info!
- Jun Loayza
Gabe Zichermann 10.31.08 at 6:22 pm
Hey Stephanie:
Great blog! I just stumbled on it a little while ago and saw this article. Welcome to the brave new world of e-business cards.
I’m the CEO of a company called rmbrME (www.rmbrme.com) - the pioneer of the e-business card as service technology. Feel free to check out our service. Also, our new iPhone app just launched this week and has already become among the most popular in its class. It was also recently featured on Apple’s Start Page (and in the New York Times).
Of course, you don’t need an iPhone to use the service, and it’s completely free. Would love to get your feedback rmbrME if you’re so inclined.
Thanks a bunch - and keep up the good work! I’ve added the blog to my must-reads!
Gabe
Stephanie Gulley 10.31.08 at 6:37 pm
@Gabe Zichermann : Thanks for stopping by! I actually just downloaded the app to my iPhone earlier this week. It’s a great application and easy to use. I like the fact that I can include a photo with my contact information that’s different from DropCard.
e-Business Cards 12.20.08 at 7:28 pm
Of course, another great solution are the electronic business cards. These allow you to put video, multimedia, music, animation, voice overs and more on a CD-Rom the same size as a regular business card and hand that out. This makes a great first and lasting impression and set you above your competition. Check out some great samples at http://www.Text-to-Art.com