evolution of business cards

I’ve been thinking about my business card recently.  I need to get new ones printed and I’d been thinking about what contact details I want on them. The organisation I work for has only in the last few years agreed to the inclusion of mobile numbers.  I wonder how they’d feel if I wanted to include my twitter name, instant message details, facebook link or linked in profile. Like many people I have various online personas and not all use my name. In some cases this was because when I started the accounts they were used for personal time only.  Now the lines are blurred and my professional and personal lives cross over.

When I meet an interesting person at a conference and exchange business cards I want to ask if they are on Twitter or Facebook or maybe blog. It allows you to sort of keep in touch in a very loose kind of way. Minimal effort, no obligations. If you want to get in direct contact some time in the future, you’ve maintained enough ambient contact that it seems no effort.  A New York Times magazine article from 5 September talks about this new digital intimacy.  Take a single tweet on its own and it probably isn’t that meaningful but I enjoy the little yet brief discussions which spring up as someone posts an interesting article and someone comments.  Twitter is an ideal vehicle for maintaining the loose-tie relationships with acquaintances yet I couldn’t imagine my organisation allowing a twitter name on a business card.

On the Art of Manliness I was reading a post on the Gentleman’s guide to the calling card. It made me think about this whole aspect again, business versus personal cards. This is a point they make themselves, that a business card isn’t suited to social situations and they advocate for the return of the calling card. I don’t think I did it consciously but I realised after I got my last lot of moo mini cards printed that I use them as my calling card. I carry both business cards and Moo mini cards and depending on the situation hand out one or the other.  Sometimes I end up handing out one of each and that seems a little weird.