No Stupid Questions

Look at that subtle off-white coloring.

The tasteful thickness of it.

Oh my God, it even has a watermark…

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

Absolutely! I collected a bunch at a craft fair on Saturday.

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.

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.

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.

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

Yes, absolutely.

Depends on your profession, but yes.

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"

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.

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

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.

I put a QR code on my smart watch with a 🔗 nk to my website

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?

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.

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

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