What Goes On Your Business Card in 2010?

It’s hard to believe that I still walk around handing out pieces of paper to new people that I meet. Of course when you wanted a nice resume in 1980 you had to have it typeset–no laser printers yet–so sometimes things do change. What follows is a list of changes by decade for what has gone on various business cards I have had. The one shown is circa 2005, if I were to redo this year I would add Skype.

Sean Murphy Business Card
  • 1980
    • Name
    • Title
    • Company Name
    • Postal Address
    • Phone (Main & Extension)
    • Telex
    • Logo
  • 1990
    • removed Telex
    • added Fax
    • added E-Mail
  • 2000
    • added Website
    • added Cellphone
    • Just Direct Phone
  • 2010
    • removed Fax
    • added Skype
Speculation for 2020

  • removed Postal Address
  • removed separate Cellphone; just one Phone #
  • added Head shot / Avatar
  • added Professional Network link
  • added Lifestream Feed (e.g. Twitter or news feed from social network)

My speculations for 2020 are that physical location does not matter for knowledge workers, you will just give out one phone number (many folks already do) and that whatever LinkedIn and Twitter have evolved into, as a professional network link and a lifestream feed respectively, will also be included. This post was triggered by a recent request for help I got from a friend who asked me “What do people put on their business cards these days” as his firm was re-doing theirs and he sent me a long list of options.

It would be interesting to compare what’s on your card with your  E-mail signature, but that’s a different blog post.

3 thoughts on “What Goes On Your Business Card in 2010?”

  1. Ha. Yes. It does change.

    If your objective is to connect professionally I would add a linkedin profile, as it probably has references and it is an efficient basic -relationship management tool.

  2. Very interesting way to look at how things have changed.

    A few weeks ago on This Week in Tech someone made the observation that the real battle over the next few years is for your online idenity, that is, who you are online. Twitter wants you to @skmurphy. Facebook wants you to be facebook.com slash skmurphy. Linkedin wants you to be linkedin.com slash skmurphy. Google wants you to be skmurphy at google.com. Just like you’ll have one phone number you’ll have one online identity. That will make your biz card a lot simpler.

  3. my card almost-meets your 2020 criteria.
    card has logo [avatar] and company name
    cell phone
    and email
    I’ve thought of adding the Linkedin -link but all the personal reference info that i want to share is on the company web site.
    but i think the twitter and other communication links will be added later

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