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Social Business Cards from Europe - Poken

Social business cards called Poken seem to be spreading in Europe and now they are expanding into
Japan. Poken is a little usb key chain that stores your social media informaton. At social events, you can quickly share this information with other Poken users by touching each others Poken. You can then go home, plug in the USB and you are connected across social networks of everyone you just met on your computer. Here is a video of Poken in action:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8ojxb_interview-of-the-poken-foun... Poken offers 5 different profiles so you can create different social media profiles for business and friend use. In addition, they also offer a ghost mode. You would use ghost mode if you didn't want to share your social media information with someone but they approached you to Poken. Your Poken would light up green (indicating successful information swap) but actually wouldn't share any of your personal information. Poken launched recently in Japan and thus far has generated a lot of buzz.

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Comment by Konstantin A Lukin on March 22, 2009 at 1:32pm
Yep, probably Poken is just the beginning, and it will get a bit more sophisticated in relatively short time..
Comment by Cameron Souza on March 20, 2009 at 11:05pm
I'm definitely going to buy a Poken. Business cards are so 2008.
Comment by Scott Murphy on March 19, 2009 at 9:35pm
An iphone app like this would be awesome. I'm still going to get a Poken just to check out it.
Comment by Viil on March 19, 2009 at 11:08am
wow, they're both handy and adorable :)

Some of us probably want to have features like this for our cellphones so we don't have to carry around too many devices. Actually, isn't there any applications similar to this among the 20 000+ iPhone apps? Taking advantage of bluetooth, wifi, or even camera to share the social network contact info?

It is interesting to see how social networking and events get more and more hybrid, blending online and offline tools and relationships. Hybrid tools and augmented reality applications are going to be plenty soon I think :)
Comment by Daniel Leuck on March 19, 2009 at 8:35am
I really like this concept. Dealing with business cards is tiring. Kurt Sussman mentioned an attempt to do the same thing with phones, but the implementation was a bit clunky (requires texting.) The president of Techno Source recently told me about a similar device for kids being sold by Disney. It allows kids to share user names for a Disney virtual world, which is of course monitored.

Your Poken would light up green (indicating successful information swap) but actually wouldn't share any of your personal information.

Ah - very useful for creepy stalker types and shiny tooth salesmen. This is the digital equivalent of giving someone the wrong number at a bar :-)

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