Is Twitter the new business card?

I attended RSA Conference a couple weeks ago. I also attended a couple of tweet-ups in San Francisco last week around the Inbound Marketing Summit. I noticed one very distinct trend: While some people were handing out business cards (mostly Moo Cards), the majority of people were merely adding the new faces they met directly to their Twitter follow lists via their smart phones. Which led me to wonder, "Is Twitter the new business card?"

This is how it went down:

1. Person meets person
2. Pleasantries are exchanged
3. Small chit chat about common business interests
4. Potential plans are made
5. "Let me get your contact info"
6. "Do you have Twitter?" (Note: this is where a business card should be exchanged)
7. "Why, yes I do?"
8. Both parties whip out Smart Phones and open respective Twitter clients
9. Both parties type "follow newperson" into the Twitter client and submit
10. "Great, nice to meet you. I will be in touch!"

It's a novel idea, really. I did it myself. I found it easy and I didn't have to worry so much about sorting through a mess of business cards when I got home (no, I don't use a scanner). But then I ran into a significant issue: "Who the heck was that guy? Why am I following this person? What was that lady's name again?"

While doing such a thing is certainly convenient, is it realistic if you want to build a solid business relationship. There's no way to enter details about this person, unless of course you immediately @ message them and say "Nice to meet you re: xyz." But what if it's for a business deal or a job opportunity? You certainly don't want to announce that to the world.

I think there's an interesting opportunity here for Twitter, in terms of monetizing. What if the company gave people an opportunity to save contact details about a person as they add others to their follow lists? Perhaps an add-on service that we can subscribe to in order to turn Twitter into a contact database of sorts. Or, some sort of LinkedIn integration would be swell, too.

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