Are business cards still a thing?

governorkeagan@lemdro.id to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 121 points –

Do people still hand out physical business cards at events or is it all digital now?

i should have asked before ordering 50, lol

EDIT:

Thank you for all the replies, I’ve got the answer I need but I’ll add some more information just in case anyone wants to know.

  • I’m based in Europe and not Japan
  • I’m working as a videographer and trying to build a film company
  • I plan on doing more event coverage so I’ll bring them with to quickly hand out my contact details.
  • The card has the following: Busines name, my name, phone number, email, and website.
  • I had thought about adding my social media but couldn’t find a nice way to do it that matched the rest of the card.

EDIT 2: just now realised I didn’t complete the last sentence of the last bullet point

57

For a while I stopped bringing cards to situations where a card would be a thing and instead I put a QR code on a widget on my phone's lock screen and told people to just scan that to add my contact info.

Results were... mixed? For a few people it was a cool conversation starter. Others fumbled a bit with what to do.

One guy, though? He was NOT amused. Apparently he made a big point of collecting all of his connections' cards in binders, and cataloguing them, both as bragging rights and a hobby. I may as well have walked into his house and peed on his stamp collection. It was very awkward.

when I was a designer and printer, I loved collecting cards to compare prints, designs, paper stock, etc.

But that’s like a stamp collector being mad at email. Wait, are stamp collectors mad at email??

I carry them because I’m a professional musician and I just get sick of spelling my name for people. It has my booking email, instagram, and phone number on it. Super handy.

Sure, if you deal with customer

It's still a nice way to get someone coordinates, like who is the sales person, or the tech support tech, or the researcher.

If you go to conference/trade fairs people willstill exchange cards.

It is about the act of giving that physical thing to someone, like a present.

It helps with building a connection to people. It cannot be replaced by anything 'digital'.

(Even if everybody scans them or photographs them later, in order to bring the data into the digital address book LOL)

QR codes on cards really bridge the gap between the physical card and the digital presence.

"scan the one on the front for my LinkedIn, and the back for my OnlyFans" smirk and wink

I handed out 4 just yesterday. I guess it depends on the kind of work you're doing. I'm a home improvement contractor and people often ask if they can give my number to their friend/neighbour etc. so I just hand them few business cards to spread around.

I do. People usually don't have time to chat when i stop by so i drop a card and ask them to reach out. I get them at Staples. Dony remember the exact price - maybe about $40 for 500.

Our company recently switched from paper to digital (popl).

It's incredibly clunky and frustrating having to explain to literally every new contact that we don't have cards and they have to use their phone to share info.

So, yes. Please keep paper cards a thing

If you do any business with Japanese or Korean people, then yes, definitely.

Yes. Not as important as they used to be, but they're still highly useful in some situation. I use(d) them a lot in my current as well as my previous job. Long story short, these jobs involve showing up on site in the middle of nowhere, meeting someone who I've never met before. I then set up thingamajig A as well as fix thingamajig B. Before I leave I make sure to leave a card with my contact details in case they have questions or anything more is needed.

Yeah, they're really handy. I work for a big company who deals with other big companies, it's often very helpful to get a specific contact person's info so a future request isn't filtered through layers of bureaucracy.

Some people like to get super nerdy with them now. If I were in better shape physically, I'd probably etch my own out of some PCB copper clad and mix up some tinning solution.

Why does that require to be in better shape?

Disability. Plus no reason to when I never leave the house or engage with others in meaningful ways.

Ooooooh.........yeah, I read it as you saying it would be hard to do with no upper body strength, or if you were really fat.

By "better shape", you mean you specifically as an individual. Thats what threw me off. I know nothing of the process, and thought you were saying I couldn't do it, being fat.

Heya, I'm in a similar situation. Chatting with other people online is still a great way to learn and pass the time :)

I don’t need business cards, but I want to get some nice ones with just my name that I can write the information I want people to have.
I guess it’s more of a calling card, really.

Yes. I work for a small company and we do give out business cards at events if someone asks or if we really hope they'll follow up with us later. To me they often serve more as a helpful reminder more than a device to convey contact information.

Yes, giving someone a disposable card is still better than the awkwardness of tapping phones or whatever nonsense they do now.

Yes, absolutely.

Depends on your profession, but yes.

I will take a small amount with me to trade events, and collect a few. There are still a lot of old school folks out there

I carry some because it's no longer a thing. My card has only the information that I know will not change: my name, email address, and mobile phone number. On the back there's a QR code (which contrasts the otherwise vintage look).

I hand out perhaps one per month so not super often, and many times the most appropriate thing to do is to simply tell people my phone number. But sometimes, especially when we're in a situation where phones are not nearby, it's quite effective to hand over a pre-made card with that info.

The average reaction is "Oh, cool" so even if they toss it once they've copied the info (which, tbh, is my expectation) it will still have made the exchange slightly out of the ordinary.

Plus, sometimes they're useful to stop a table from rattling, or leave a message for someone who's not currently present, and so on.

At my job we recently got 15 plastic cards with an NFC chip. Scan the card and you go to a page where you can add the info to your contacts. There's a qr code for when NFC is disabled and too complex to turn on for some people (i.e. CEO's and the like).

This being Lemmy, this'll probably get comments like "never scan an unknown NFC tag blah blah blah"

Why is NFC needed in this case? Regardless of this being a potential security risk (which it is, but it's not my point here), does it provide any additional value over a QR scan, which can easily store a URL or a contact information?

Contact images, perhaps? Or maybe just aesthetic purposes with however they're choosing to distribute their contacts, and don't want to paste QR codes in places. For contact transfer, I don't think there's much technical advantage to using NFC over a QR code, since QR codes can fit a lot more data than most people realize.

Not needed, but convenient. NFC is enabled by default on most phones so all they have to do is touch the card.

I see your point, but seems the same effort as a QR scan

NFC: hold to card, done. Qr: unlock phone, open camera, scan, confirm opening link.

Granted, it's 4 seconds vs 0,5 second but still.

God, information security! Only total losers care about that! I just cannot possibly imagine why CEOs never have phones with working NFC. Cannot possibly be because IT disables it so the brainless cretins don't scan the thousands of unknown NFCs that get pushed on them by arrogant and conceited industry randos who wont leave them alone. Nah. That can't be it.

... Blah blah blah.

Our phishing training specifically says don’t scan random QR codes or nfc tags.

Yeah but it's not random. It's a business card. Surely some trust in other people can be possible.

If you’re in a vaguely sensitive industry, there’s going to be a few people seeing what they can get into at those conferences.

This is especially true of things like cyber security conferences, or tech. They’ll be crawling with corporate spies.

Actually, I’d say any major trade or industry conference is going to have corporate spies and more… eh, freelance trying to see what they can get into.

So the question becomes: have you/your company run a background check on that guy? No? Then why the hell do you trust him?

Because he paid $10k for a booth to talk about bird safe window tinting, and can actually answer questions about bird safe window tinting. Dude wants to go through all that work into maybe fooling me into giving up my work login credentials, more power to him.

I mean, random NFC tags, I can understand. But, isn't advising someone to avoid QR codes obsolete by now? It was a pretty worthwhile attack vector at one point, but nowadays most phones will ask "Do you want to ?" before actually doing anything with it...

Although, now that I think about it, it is best practice to advise to the lowest common denominator... Sometimes I overestimate users' ability to avoid doing stupid things...

That process is safe until it’s not. There may be an exploit there waiting to be discovered. Thst exploit will never happen if you just don’t.

I am a print finisher in the UK and yes we still do a lot of business cards for people. More often than not these days though it tends to be more high end finishes things like foiling, duplex or triplexing with different coloured stocks, round corners etc.

Ten years ago and back we did a lot more high quantity shitty cards but I also worked in a more generic print place then so they may still get pumped through bigger places.

I'm actually foiling some business cards right now xD

I dunno. Paper ones are kinda like tiny junk mail to me, but with the added guilt trip of being tied to a real identity. If someone handed me a business card that was actually a sticker though, I'd be quietly delighted and think of them every time I saw it.

Yes, for anyone who sells services in person, like a mortgage broker, notary, handyman, painter, etc.

I sell stuff entirely via the internet, never needed a card.

Oh yeah. At in person networking events they are still a big thing. There just aren't as many in person networking events these days (like trade shows), although they're picking back up.

My wife is a tattoo artist, and she hands a decent amount of them out. But, really the point is that it has a QR code to her Instagram.

Is there an alternative? Anything that's widely adopted an lets you give out and receive contact info reliably and in like 15s max?

There are digital business card apps like cardee.me and hihello.

I've used both and they're decent for networking in tech events.

Yep. We just ordered a big batch for some upcoming events. Print is still alive.

Yes, and I'm not in Japan. Some people will be surprised about a card because they pay with Apple pay on their phone and think they're is nothing outside their universe

I’m based in Europe and not Japan

Ah, thanks for clarifying that you're in the non Japanese part of Europe