The Death of the Business Card

Over the weekend, the Globe and Mail has a story about business card was disappearing as “Generation Blackberry’ relies more on electronic data than paper. While the business card may not as much of a corporate staple as it was 25 years ago, the suggestion it is fading into the sunset is overblown – particularly the notion seven million Blackberry users are sounding the death toll.

Truth be told, it’s not the Blackberry or other portable devices in which you can input data that will reduce business card usage but the growth of blogs. If want someone to know more about who you are, what you do and how you think, a blog is doing to a lot better job than a little piece of paper with your name, e-mail address and telephone number on it. In a sense, blogs could take the place of the business card and the resume.

We may get to a point soon where business cards will simply consist of your name and the blog URL, or you could tell someone you met to just Google “Mark Evans and technology” to find you (assuming you’ve been writing for awhile about a particular topic). Then again, there is something formal about business cards that Blackberrys or blogs don’t have. A business card is a sign of a relationship just beginning, which is why in Asia you treat a business card with great respect, and study its information before talking to the person who gave it to you.

So, long live the business card! (For the history of the business card, click here.)