The business card has long since left the realm of the office Rolodex and entered the world of the Web.

Business acquaintances and meeting attendees now transmit contact information between cellphones, and Web sites and mobile apps can connect that information to social and business networks.

Sandy Avvari, a digital and social media analyst at a Canadian automotive manufacturer, said she met about 15 people a week in her job but exchanged paper business cards only about 20 percent of the time. “We’re much more likely to exchange Twitter handles or connect to each other on LinkedIn,” she said.

Ms. Avvari said she used CardMunch, a free app, to take a photograph of a business card and send it to a service that transcribes the information and adds it to her phone’s address book. CardMunch is owned by LinkedIn, and so if the person is a member, a photo and basic profile of the business card’s owner appear on Ms. Avvari’s phone, allowing her to connect with the person on that service.

Attaching a LinkedIn profile to the business card “makes the contact dynamic, showing job changes or new phone numbers when they happen,” Ms. Avvari said. “It becomes more than a static piece of paper or address book entry.”

With the free app Bump, users can bump or tap their phones together to share contact information. The phones vibrate when they, or the hands holding them, make contact, and information is exchanged between the users’ address books.

If both users are signed into Facebook or LinkedIn, a list of acquaintances they have in common on those sites and in their address books will be displayed. Users can also transmit a photo, for example, of a product they sell if they are meeting at a trade show. Once two people have exchanged data, they can stay in touch using a messaging feature in the app. Bump works across platforms on Android and Apple devices.

With so many contacts flooding into business travelers’ address books, the details of how they met, what they talked about or why someone may be a good contact in the future can fade. Apps like Contacts Journal ($7.99 for iOS, or a free trial version) help users keep track of interactions. Documents like contracts or brochures can be attached to contact information, and users can see a map with pushpins denoting their contacts’ locations.

Many networking apps go beyond electronic business card exchanges and mobile contact databases. LinkedIn is the largest player in the business networking market, with more than 187 million members around the world. In addition to displaying their résumés online, LinkedIn members “connect” to people they know on the service, creating a virtual who-knows-whom map. Job seekers can look for a specific hiring manager and see if they have any connections in common. An employer evaluating a job candidate can get a trusted reference from someone they both know.

The basic functions of LinkedIn are free for individual users. For a monthly fee ranging from $16 to $500, users can gain access to additional search features and contact other members directly without waiting for an electronic introduction.

To network while on a business trip, travelers can use the free Planely Web site to type in their flight itineraries and see who else is traveling at the same time, with overlapping flight plans. Conference- or conventiongoers might find other attendees to share a taxi to the hotel, for instance. Nervous fliers might find someone to take their mind off a long or bumpy flight. The app lists all the Planely travelers on the user’s flight and those who are passing through the airport at the same time, to create a “social flying experience.”

Some networking apps use the phone owner’s location. The Friendthem app works with Facebook, displaying all members who are nearby and have signed up to be visible. This allows two people who meet at a conference, or perhaps at a hotel bar, to become Facebook friends easily, without having to search through a list of similar names to find the right person.

Friend requests can be sent to people who appear nearby, but no instant messaging is available because “our users don’t want creepy people sending them messages like, ‘I see you across the room,’ ” said Charles Sankowich, chief executive and founder of Friendthem. “We want our users to have total control of who communicates with them.” Friendthem also allows users to specify “hiding places,” like home or work, where they want to be invisible.

At home or on the road, the MeetMe app can offer two people convenient locations to meet. Users can choose the type of restaurant they want and use a slider bar to specify whether the meeting place should be equidistant from the two people or closer to one of them. The app also displays user reviews of meeting places and information from Yelp.com, along with directions.

There are, of course, downsides to the constant tracking of business colleagues. Networking apps make it harder to excuse not getting in touch with people by claiming you lost their card or did not know they had changed jobs. “The location-aware apps can also be tricky,” said James Sun, chief executive of Pirq, a mobile app developer in Seattle, “because once someone knows you are in the area, can you avoid having coffee with them?”

And the convenience and abundance of digital contact can be overwhelming, said David Domke, a communications professor at the University of Washington. People can become almost numb to the constant stream of data. “That’s why face to face, human interaction between people has become even more valuable in the digital age,” he said.

Still, users say social media can make initial business meetings less awkward. When she was applying for her current job, Ms. Avvari found the hiring manager’s Twitter stream and noticed they shared a love of baked goods. During the interview, Ms. Avvari brought up her own passion for food and her food blog, which she might not have mentioned otherwise, and the two hit it off.

“Whether it’s an employer or customer, I think few people realize how valuable researching them on social media can be for business,” she said.

Twitter also offers in-person networking on the road. At conferences, there might be a Twitter hashtag, Ms. Avvari said, like #CIAS for the Canadian International Auto Show, so attendees can see one another’s posts. “Sometimes I’ll see a funny or interesting tweet and ask to meet that person for coffee during one of the breaks,” she said.

Krista Canfield, a spokeswoman for LinkedIn, said she used the site to meet people when she traveled for her job. “If I am going to Japan or Brazil and I don’t know anyone,” she said, “I try to connect with people who know someone in my network and meet them for a meal, instead of eating alone.”

app交換名片 「啾」一下手機吧

紐約時報報導，名片已進入網路世界，如今許多人透過手機傳送聯絡資訊，再透過網站和行動應用程式（app）把資訊傳至社群和商業網絡。

加拿大1家企業製造商的數位與媒體分析師亞瓦利（Sandy Avvari）說，她因為工作每周約認識15個人，但僅20%交換紙本名片，「我們現在較常透過推特（Twitter）或LinkedIn聯繫」。

亞瓦利說，她都使用免費的CardMunch軟體拍下名片，上傳至能抓下名片資訊的服務，再新增至手機通訊錄。CardMunch是LinkedIn所有，若某人是LinkedIn的用戶，名片主人的照片和個人檔案就是出現在亞瓦利的手機上，讓她能與名片主人聯絡。

亞瓦利說，讓LinkedIn上的個人檔案與名片相通，「使聯繫動態化，若是換工作或更換手機號碼，都看得到，已不是靜態的1張紙或單純只是通訊錄」。

有了免費軟體Bump，使用者只需輕輕碰撞彼此的手機，就能分享聯絡資訊。碰撞以交換彼此通訊錄時，手機會震動。

若雙方都是臉書（Facebook）或LinkedIn的用戶，他們在社群網站上或通訊錄中的共同朋友會顯示出來。如果在貿易展上碰面，使用者也能傳送其 所推銷產品的照片。曾交換資料的兩人，能透過Bump軟體中的簡訊功能保持聯繫。Android和蘋果裝置等平台都能使用Bump。

現代社會許多人的通訊錄上有一大串聯絡人，如何認識、碰面時聊了什麼、或未來有機會再聯絡的理由等細節可能流失。這時像Contacts Journal這類的應用程式能協助用戶追蹤互動。

這些軟體的基本功能大多不收費，要用到進階功能就需付費。例如LinkedIn的月費從16到500美元不等，付費用戶可使用額外的搜尋功能，也可直接聯繫LinkedIn其他會員。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/business/business-cards-give-way-to-cellphone-apps-for-networking.html

2012-12-03．經濟日報．A7．國際企業．編譯于倩若