Business Cards Are Going Paperless

Business cards have been part of business forever. But, the Internet finally has applications that reduce the need for business cards.

Laurie Percival mentioned that while at the SXSW conference she used Contxts, a new SMS-based service that shares business card information with someone by just sending their mobile phone number to an SMS "short code."

There are many times when you don't have business cards to give to a new acquaintance. You might be at a conference and run out. Or, you might be at such a casual location that your business cards aren't handy. Both seemed to occur a lot at SXSW!

There are two ways to use Contxts. One way is to send your contact's mobile phone number to Contxts and they will send your business card information to your contact's mobile phone. Or, your contact can text your user ID to Contxts at 50500 and retrieve your business card data via SMS.

One of the extra benefits of Contxts is that you can list all of your favorite social media addresses in your profile, which you couldn't include on a paper business card.

Contxts won't replace paper business cards, but as they add features it should reduce the keying of new contacts into a contact manager.

I'm sure Contxts will be used a lot at our next LINC networking event.