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by jenius
5227 days ago
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First of all, this is silly and far more awkward than just exchanging business cards. I feel like they entirely forgot about business cards while developing this. Why would anyone want to enter in all their contact info over and over when they could just have their face and info printed on like 500 cards and hand you one of them? That being said, I go to a lot of networking events and I have found that not bringing business cards is the best way to make connections - they often are forgotten or thrown out. What I do is I hand the person my phone and say send yourself an email. Then when you get it tomorrow, reply back and we can talk, maybe arrange to meet up later for drinks or something. This strategy has been incredibly effective in maintaining the conversaton - usually they send an email with something about the event or what we were talking about and it provides context. This comment isn't really going toward any great conclusion, really. I feel like they are on to something with the 'give them your phone' part, but doing it wrong by replicating a business card. And nobody wants to take a picture of themselves up close, that's just awkward. |
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First, like you, I don't think business cards are the solution. Not only are they insanely wasteful, but the only way to "stand out" of the pile of business cards someone inevitably has at the end of an event, is by having the best or most clever design, which is of course all subjective anyway.
I too have started handing my phone over to people I meet who I actually want to engage with later, and usually this involves trading phones, so I can give them my information as well (it's more likely one of the two of us will actually follow up).
That said, it's almost always a different medium where we exchange information. It might be sending a text, adding to contacts, friending on Facebook (if we're really hitting it off), following on Twitter, or simply sending an email. By the end of the night I've initiated conversations in multiple places, and it becomes harder to follow up and remember who is who.
This is why I DO think the design of this application is actually pretty great. The idea of it all being centrally located, based on time/encounters, as well as showing faces, does make sense. The execution, and real-world use however, is where it falls short.
Like others in this thread, I also agree that having someone take a picture of themselves is potentially awkward (I'm sure some people would be perfectly happy to do this, but I'd personally feel odd about it).
The last problem is what kills Bump for me, and that's that it's rare that others have Bump as well. We both have to have the application for it to work, and because of that... I've deleted Bump (as have others). I suppose Evernote has half solved this here, but the trading part of the demo does face this problem.
What makes more sense to me is working with a service like Rapportive, and based on one piece of data, instantly pulling in everything I need to know about this person for future reference, as well as all of their networks.