I ended up working in print, or I guess print-adjacent, right after the book came out. This scene nails the time period, business cards were experimented with in terms of weight (the thickness), being able to put watermarks on them more easily, and so on. Once that opened up, a period of competition happened and it was just as ... petty and fraught as that scene, as Bateman more or less holds himself together against forces of internal dissolution as both his taste goes unacknowledged and he is effortlessly one-upped by Paul Allen, again, who isn't even in the room.
These are more akin to the old Victorian concept[0], than the modern business cards. They are quite nice, Moo.com cards. They have my "personal brand" on one side, and simple contact info, on the other.
They are personal; not business (I also have business cards, but no one ever wants them).
I finally managed to get my last name as a domain name. My calling cards are all letterpress (reverse embossing) and read "{first_name}@{last-name}.com". The twist is that first name and last name are black, the "@" and ".com" are struck blind (no ink). The result is a card that just has my name on it at first glance, but when you look at it you realize it's an email address.
If you ever want to add a phone number and a website, there is a way to do it while still being fairly minimal.
An IPv4 address is a 32-bit unsigned integer. It is commonly written in the form x.y.z.w, where x, y, z, and w are all unsigned octets. E.g., HN's IP is 3520653040, which in x.y.z.w form 209.216.230.240.
Most common IP parses accept the 32-bit integer form. E.g.,
$ ping 3520653040
PING 3520653040 (209.216.230.240): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 209.216.230.240: icmp_seq=0 ttl=50 time=41.239 ms
IP addresses can also be written in x.y.z form, where x and y are unsigned octets and z is a 16-bit unsigned integer, and in x.y form where x is an unsigned octet and y is a 24-bit unsigned integer.
HN's IP written in those forms is 209.216.59120 and 209.14214896. Those forms are also accepted by most common IP parsers. Browse to http://209.216.59120 or http://209.14214896 and you end up at HN.
In many countries, including the US, telephone numbers are written as 3 unsigned integers, x, y, and z. There are usually a variety of ways to format those such as (x) y-z or x-y-z or x y z or x.y.z.
It should be possible to get a phone number x y z where x and y are both less than 255 and where the IP address x.y.z is also valid. Obtain that IP address and put an HTTP (not HTTPS) server there (which can just redirect to your name-based HTTPS site), and then you can add to your business card
Check out the letterpress idea. It's nice and subtle and adds a nice touch, but there is a higher setup fee. I think for mine it was like $100 for setup, but then typical prices for repeat orders.
yep. They are perfect. Then if they decide not to contact it isn't weird, it's very easy to say they lost it. Then we can all skip the weird ritual of adding each other to our phones so we can not call each other.
I was actually talking to a guy from the late 1800s the other day at a dinner party, and he simply couldn't believe that we spend all our days (including early morning!) on "calls" with co-workers, but never have a set day and time set aside for social calls. Truly, we lost something.
I just had to order more cards now that I am doing more in-person events. I have not seen any health concerns around business cards.
I have a QR Code on the back of my card to make it easier for people to import the data, but IMO the physical cards are still highly valuable. I use them as easy reminders about who to follow up with after an event, or to jot a couple of notes on while talking.
The contactless alternatives are neat, but they are always a hassle, IME, as the article also outlines.
Agreed. When your job requires you to meet new people often or do trade shows, business cards with a qr code are the way to go. At one trade show I collected about 80 cards. About 10 people had special app vcards. Each with a totally different app. I'm not downloading an app for your information. Give me the fucking piece of paper.
However, pro tip. Blank back cards. People want to write notes about you and vice versa. Stop over designing cards with a back. A typical card is not a flyer. You should only hand them out to people you've met and talked to. That same card will fail as that hybrid business card/flyer. You'll never have enough info to justify expecting someone to go "huh, I just found this card somewhere without context and suddenly I'm compelled to talk to them".
My last job gave me a box of business cards that was the size of a brick. 500? 1000? I don't know.
What was I supposed to do with them? We never met with anyone in person because of covid. I cut them into strips and used them to pick my teeth. When I left, the box was still in my desk and I had probably used 25 of them.
Ha, I also once had a job which just gave me, without being asked, a box of business cards I never even opened. I just assumed that kickbacks from a printing company to a VP somewhere were responsible.
Yeah....I've always had business cards for a long, long, long time ago. Always got 1,000 cards, but I'd work somewhere for 5 years and still have 995 cards left at the end. Meanwhile that huge brick took up valuable disk drawer real estate. Guess I could have thrown all of them but 50 cards away, but most people just don't for whatever reason.
No mention of Japan or Asia. Last I lived there (~10 years ago), business cards were an essential part of almost every business encounter. So, if you do business in Japan (and maybe other East Asian countries), you want business cards. There's all sorts of etiquette in how you hand them to one another, but so long as you keep them right side up facing your partner so they can read it, you're 80% of the way there.
You're supposed to carry around a purpose-built business card holder case. After the meeting, you carefully place the cards into your case and take them with you for later reference.
I still love traditional business cards. It’s so uncommon now, that Zoomers find it a novelty and I immediately come across as ancient (although I’m a Millennial).
The cost is so minuscule, I use them almost like post-it notes, writing stuff down on the back for people I meet.
I’m sure they mostly end up in the trash, but it does beat handing someone a post-it note with my email on it.
> but it does beat handing someone a post-it note with my email on it
When does this ever come up? I have never once in my life ever felt the need to copy down a printed email, url, or phone number. If you're a company rep, you have a website I'll just Google, if you're a person you have social media or I just hand you my phone to enter your phone number.
So if you’re good at remembering names, that’s good. If you want to pull your phone out and mess with it for half a minute (versus 3 seconds to pocket a card), then sure. For me, that’s usually a no on both, and I think others are similar.
I never really knew what to do with the business cards I ended up with at conferences and the like.
There was one time, I had about twenty or so cards and I was out at a bar with a college friend during the conference so I started going up to random people, and saying to them things like, “Dave Burbach, eel trainer,” and handing them one of the cards I’d been given and walking away. They got some surrealism in their lives and I got rid of all the cards I’d accumulated.
Implanting a chip in one's hand is overkill. An NFC is just basically a relay antenna... you could wear it or have it attached to your watch or ring. When you change your address or business title, it's easy to update all the information. If you hold a chip inside your hand, you'll have to get it replaced if your info changes. Not the best tech choice.
An implanted chip made by a company called "Dangerous Things" who's address is a box at a UPS Store disguised as a "suite" and whose website has no privacy policy or even TOS. Dangerous things, indeed.
Some of them can be rewritten. If you can read it through the skin, you can rewrite the data through the skin. No idea how many times, but presumably enough to keep your name/title/email/phone up-to-date.
Slightly OT: I met Kevin Mitnick at The Last HOPE in 2008 in NYC and got his 'business card'. The card itself is a lockpick set - super cool! I nearly lost it to airport security because I used to carry it with me everywhere (ha, just in case I need it), but now I keep it at home since it's too cool to risk losing.
Useful for dinner, networking events. Use them as source for their full name so i can find them on linkedin to connect and/or to put their info into my contacts. I never save them.
I never log into LinkedIn on my phone, and I would never in a million years install their app — OTOH it’s easy enough to type in a LinkedIn URL when I get to my home computer and an isolated browser instance.
I like them for the same exact reason that you Gen Z's will like what you like right now, but in in 50 years, but some young 18-year-old whippersnapper in 2072 is going to make fun of you, but you won't care. Get off my grass.
I exchange Instagram more than almost anything else these days. Second to that would be WhatsApp. Email or text would be the last resort. But please don't hand me an object, I have plenty and don't need any more.
I know where they're not going anywhere anytime soon. I was in Bogota a few years back and while walking on the street, even of some pretty nice, absolutely not dodgy areas at all, you will be handed this business cards reading "CHICAS", in some streets you could easily collect 5. Now, I dont want to be rude and just walk away and leave someone with his hand extended towards me so I generally just took them and carried on... By the time I came back to my appartment it'd look like I just came back from a meet and greet at a strip club.
Wikipedia has a section on it's use in crime, but suggests that transdermal doses would be too small to be effective - ingesting it being the main attack method.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopolamine#Crime
what they do is let you get close and blow the powder in your face and that is enough. usually a distraction like they will get you to open a card and doing so it sprays the powder as you get close to inspect it. super scary.
OSAC issued a warning in 2012, suggesting ~30k cases a year.
From Wikipedia:
> Between 1998 and 2004, 13% of emergency-room admissions for "poisoning with criminal intentions" in a clinic of Bogotá, Colombia, have been attributed to scopolamine, and 44% to benzodiazepines.[39] Most commonly, the person has been poisoned by a robber who gave the victim a scopolamine-laced beverage, in the hope that the victim would become unconscious or unable to effectively resist the robbery.[39]
RESULTS: 860 clinical files were reviewed. We found a greater frequency of this intoxication in young people and
male gender. The main cause was robbery.
860 clinical files reviewed. 806.13/(2004-1998)=~18 cases annually of emergency-room admissions from "poisoning with criminal intention with scopolamine for one clinic.
Now these are beverages not business cards and the number appears to be trivially small. But it's only one clinic, how many clinics are there in Bogotá and more importantly, what is their annual case load?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12245-015-0079-y
"Seventy EDs participated (82 % response). Most EDs (87 %) were located in hospitals, and 83 % were independent hospital departments. The median annual ED visit volume was approximately 50,000 visits."
Okay, 18 annual cases per clinic. On any given night a clinic might have 18/50000 = 3.6E-4 cases of scopolamine-laced beverage poisoning.
seventy EDs participated (82 % response) 70/.82=~86 clinics in Bogotá...
863.6E-4=3.10E-02 cases a nightly.
I know my analysis is a bit rough, but I really am not worried about this happening should I visit Bogotá, Colombia. I'm not going to go out drinking alone by any means, but have some common sense this is not a frequent occurrence.
Oh is it? Never heard of that. I was on a pretty nice area of the city for about 3 months, never had a problem. Not a single one. I used to stay around the 85th street and mostly spend my time in Polo, Chico, Castellana, Usaquen, but I was also keen on Chapinero and Candelaria. I felt even safer than at home.
> The essential convention was that a first person would not expect to see a second person in the second's own home (unless invited or introduced) without having first left his visiting card at the second's home. Upon leaving the card, the first would not expect to be admitted initially but instead might receive a card at his own home in response from the second. This would serve as a signal that a personal visit and meeting at home would be welcome. On the other hand, if no card was forthcoming, or if a card was sent in an envelope, a personal visit was thereby discouraged.
and also:
> Sample lady's visiting card, specifying an "At Home" day
> The "At Home" day was a social custom in Victorian Britain, where women of gentle status would receive visitors on a specific day of the week.
I've never had a use for them and I've been working since 1999. :/ It's not a recent thing.
The only people that need them are mass marketing vultures at tradeshows. And there they will scan your conference badge anyway (Usually you must provide a phone number so I always make a "typo" in it).
Everyone else I meet will just look me up on LinkedIn. It helps that my name is not very common.
I have a box old enough that it gives my email address as "Internet"--slightly earlier cards printed by my employer would have given a Compuserve email address also. It looks as I used a hundred or so of them, but I have no idea how.
I've had business cards for decades. Still do, sitting in a drawer here. But I haven't actually found it useful to hand them out to anybody in about 10 years.
If my current lifetime supply becomes obsolete, I doubt I'll bother getting more.
I’m thinking of getting cards again because spelling my full name is awkward. It’s also part of my website and email address. Frankly I’d rather just put a piece of paper with my info on the reception desk and let them read it.
I briefly worked for a company in Atlanta that made big plans centered around the CD-ROM business card. It didn't work out as planned and I recall a storage area full of those oddly shaped things.
I think I will opt out of the chip in my hand. I have a shortcut on my phone's homescreen to a QR code linking to my site with all my details including .vcf file.
Fun fact: GDPR applies to data stored on paper records.
Give someone at a company that is subject to GDPR your business card and if it contains your personal information they are supposed to apply all the GDPR protections and your are suppose to have all the GDPR data subject rights.
I doubt any company is ever going to get fined, or even investigated, for improper handling of business cards, so this is more just amusing trivia than something you should be concerned about (probably).
