[ivanb]

I imagine a ubiquitous feature in every business smartphone that just broadcasts your vCard to nearby smartphones if you want to be contacted. Just something more comfortable than current Bluetooth vCard sharing. I say a "feature" because I think that there is no monetization opportunity in this idea. It would only look good as a standard feature.

[rhizome]

VCard is still on the "intentional transmission" side of things. What I'm talking about is the question, "why have a discrete identity blob to hand out (physically or digitally) when your identity is out there and easy to find with the right proximity. "Proximity" being measured by social distance.

If I meet you someplace and we're talking like "I'm rhizome from HN," you can then click on my name when you get home (or from your phone) and get a means of communicating further with me. The goal of business cards isn't really just to collect pieces of paper, it's to have a reference by which to enable further interactions. Those references are becoming more and more ephemeral, and more and more ubiquitous.