Spincard

@rrhoover - Yes, the business card transaction hasn't really changed over the years. We've spent a lot of time analyzing this transaction and also all of the attempts to bring the transaction digital. And through it all we came up with 2 key elements that we think are critical; 6 character pin and full screen photo. The 6 character pin is something you can memorize and quickly to type. The full screen photo of the person allows you to put a face to the name before or after the transaction. We just launched, but we have a bunch of excited plans for the next month, so we look forward to hear what others think. @johnmurch - Thanks, and yes, the chicken/egg problem always sucks, but we're really excited about some of unique marketing approaches over the next month so hopefully that'll spark some interest. What's important is focusing on "pockets" of individuals and letting it grow from there. I haven't seen Clinck yet, so I appreciate the share. You can actually do the same thing with Spincard, but its always 6 characters to type, shorter than any email address I know ;). Ahh I wish I could go to SXSW this year this would such an awesome place to have fun with Spincards! Thanks for taking the time to share your input guys, it really means a lot!

TBH, I'm always skeptical of services that try to replace the business card. The transaction of sharing a card is so engrained in our culture and behavior and while it's far from ideal, solutions I've seen provide incremental value, not enough to get people to switch. That said, I haven't played with Spincard yet! :) @alexbaldwin might be interested in this.

Love the idea/approach, but still a chicken and egg. http://clinck.me/ is pretty slick as I can just open the app and hand the phone to let them type in their email. Business cards is hard to disrupt, but anyone who can get that momentum going (cough cough sxsw coming up) it's going to last. Oh and RIP #hashable as I thought that was going to be it and my personalCRM :( maybe next time.

@italianst4 - congrats on the launch! Clearly you've thought through this thoroughly. Curious to see how you market the product. If you can share a preview, please do! :)

@rrhoover - Thank you! As in our marketing strategy? One of our approaches are Spinparties. Any networking event can have the added element of a Spinparty. We will have a small setup with a professional photographer who will take free head shots of attendees. The attendee will have a quality head shot for their Spincard (we've built an internal app to allow us to upload the headshot directly to someone's Spincard, simplifying this process). We have buttons for people to wear (shirts, backpacks, etc) that say "What's your Spin?". We also created name badges (if the event doesn't already have them) that have a place where you can write your Spin on it. We have a few Spinparties lined up and are excited to see how it goes.

Might be easy to get a foothold in Detroit since it's a smaller community - the key is network density in critical clusters. I like the idea of a pin - but why not a unique username?

@nbashaw - We thought about unique usernames, but we wanted to keep things short and sweet. 6 characters can be grouped (ABC - 123) and should be easy to memorize. Short means less to type to exchange information. Second, always 6 characters keeps it consistent when sharing with others, much like when you share your phone number, if you only get say 6 numbers, you know it's missing one. And yes, I totally agree with you about network density and we think Detroit is a great launch pad for a product like this.