Business cards are boring, right? Recently, PSFK founder, Piers and I were lucky enough to meet the brains behind a whole new product and service – PleasureCards, ‘reinvented for the modern, social and networked consumer market’.
Even though the price is cheap the service and product is not, with their funky designs and cute size, the cards offer more – free webspace for one. Here’s what Pleasurecards Founder and CEO, Richard Moross said when we talked to him:
The business is quite clever – no inventory (on demand – product is virtual until moment of sale), customers create the content (designs) and get share of revenue upon a sale, and very viral (customers promote through use).
I invented a new way of printing that works like iTunes – a sort of printing playlist – any combination of designs from a central library – each one personalised for a customer.
We’re sold!
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
This idea and concept have been around for years – at least in Spain where people have been handing out personalised “pleasure cards”, with personal rather than business details, for a while.
http://www.urbanjunkies.com/lon/030305.html
Nitcards.com – with their very racy, highly personalised designs – is no longer in business but others have been around for a while. Sites like i-yo, with operations more similar to PleasureCards, spring to mind http://www.i-yo.com
July 22nd, 2005 at 8:07 am
You’re quite right that the idea has been around for a few years – some 500 years if Wikipedia is to be believed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_card
I think what makes PleasureCards different and, in my mind, special, is the fact that they aren’t just cards – each one has personal webspace built in for free: a sort of vast online version of the card itself. So, the cards are more than just simply a design and a tactile offline tool to present one’s details – they’re also a key: unlocking all the elements of our lives that we choose to share online – our blogs, our photos, our bookmarks etc.
By combining the most enduring format for personal information transferral:the card (one the first manifestations to derive from Gutenberg’s printing press/circa 1450) with the fastest growing communications format ever: the internet ( attrib. Berners-lee 1989)- PleasureCards is going well beyond being simply a printer of cards and is fast becoming the only communications product that allows people to express themselves (and communicate their details) in both these mediums.
Never has such a marriage been so relevant – just look at the dilemma facing online social networks – rapid growth (desire from individuals to share info in this way) but no revenue, and no way for their members to link the service to their offline lives.
The endurance of the printed medium in the digital age is testament to the relevance of both its tactile qualities as well as its dominance in an offline environment – what’s interesting to me (a relative newcomer to both print and the net before PleasureCards) is that ebusiness so often overlooks the potency of the offline, human, network. I’ve communicated with a lot of people online, but I met all my close friends in person before I skyped them.
July 22nd, 2005 at 11:46 am
When this entry first popped up in my feed reader, I thought it was going to be about business cards that have a piece in technology implanted in them – like an RFID chip that beams the info straight into the recipient’s computer or cellphone. Now THAT’s something I’d buy; I agree with many of the other commenters that cards containinô
July 24th, 2005 at 5:28 pm
I’ve seen something like that before.. Its a good substitute for businesscards.
October 20th, 2005 at 12:34 pm