Digital Business Cards FAQ Part 2: What Digital Business Card Should You Get

Now that you have a rough idea of what a digital business card is, knowing what types of digital business cards there are and how they function should give you a total understanding of how they work and which services might be suitable for you.

Going back on the previous post, there are four main types of business cards you need to know;

• Phone contact cards, 
• E-mail based business cards, 
• Social networking sites as business cards, 
• Tools and applications such as Pokens or the iPhone used to exchange business card data.

The Phone Business Card
Calling card and the e-mail based digital contact card are quite interchangeable as you can send e-mail through phone now and you can also e-mail using your phone. The main difference is that phone-based digital calling cards operates from your phone and makes use of SMS or Bluetooth functions while E-mail based digital calling cards, operates from your e-mail account.

Examples of Phone-based digital contact cards are Contxts, TxtID and DUB. Contxts lets you send and receive calling cards via SMS, while TxtID is a service that works by having the other party text your username to a six digit number and where they will receive your contact info via SMS. To use DUB contact cards, an account must first be created on their website, thereafter you can then have it sent to other users by email or SMS, simply by sending a text message to the DUB site. These services start with free program options, but usually offer paid services that allow you to access more function or send and receive more digital calling cards.

E-mail Based Business Cards
For E-mail based business cards, companies such as Drop Card and Weavemet offer such services. Both of the companies offers services that works similar to Contxts and TxtID where you create a profile on their site, text the e-mail address to a dropcard number and your contact will receive your contact card in their e-mail.

Social Networking Sites as Business Card
This type of digital business card utilized by using your social networking profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Google profiles as business cards. Particularly, there is a service that aggregates all your social network profiles like MyNameIsE.  MyNameIsE is a site that collects all of your social profiles into a virtual calling card that can be accessed via mobile web.

Phone Business Card Applications and Pheriperals
Because iPhones are really popular nowadays and everyone seems to be getting their own, there have been a lot of iPhone apps around. One of them is named Pokens that is a device that you use with other people with the same devices where the device trades the contact information. Some of these apps specialize on contact data entry. Examples of these iPhone apps are vCard and BeamME.