Is the cloud pushing business cards toward extinction?

Recently as I reached the end of my 1,000 pack of business cards I started to seriously contemplate how many more I needed to order.
It’s taken me nearly 2 years to go through the 1,000 cards, which is amazing considering how many meetings and introductions I do.
Why have I not gone through them faster? While these little pieces of cardboard are relatively inexpensive I don’t exactly hoard them – but I do follow a few rules:
– don’t hand out your business card unless someone has asked for it (or if they don’t have one but you want to communicate with them)
– if you’ve already exchanged emails with signatures then you already have each others details, so why give each other a piece of cardboard as well?

How many people do you know have piles of business cards they’ve received?
When you connect to a contact on social networks such as LinkedIn you go beyond the mere contact details of the business card – you establish a relationship that surpasses contact details and workplaces.

My latest piece for Dynamic Business examines the demise of the business card, and how technologies such as cloud and NFC are moving us to a new era of contact sharing and information exchanges.