Mobile app idea

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Here’s the problem: when you meet somebody, you can exchange business cards, and maybe that business card has your facebook or linkedin url.

Then later, that person can send you an invite or a friend request based on how you gave them your URL.

It would be nicer to more quickly close this gap, so that at the moment you meet somebody, you can instantly “friend” each other, sort of like this:

  1. I’m talking to somebody that asks me for my card. I pull out my mobile phone and so do they. I tell them my phone number, and they text a message to some other third party service with the message payload being my phone number.
  2. Then the other person tells me their phone number and I send a text message to that same third party service with the other guy’s phone number.
  3. The third-party system links the accounts associated with the two phone numbers as “friends”.
  4. Later when I check my account on the third-party service, I see all the contact info for the person I met.

This ain’t rocket science. Just a faster way to share contact information. Does this already exist?

Instead of using SMS, the system could also use HTTP posts, but not every phone has internet access. In addition to just using my phone number, maybe me and the other person could both agree to send in a short password, which must match before the system links the two accounts.

9 thoughts on “Mobile app idea”

  1. check out contxts.com, it is similar to what you describe…. ask your new acquaintance for their number, then sms it to 50500 (contxts), which then sends your “business card” to your new acquaintance via sms.

    I've had two people send me their business card this way.

  2. I love the idea, but what about SMS charges? Not everyone has a TXT plan.

    Now, a SUPER tiny mobile application that sends that same payload to a server-side script via an active connection — THAT would be cool.

    Then again it may be weird to think that people have Internet-enabled mobile devices with no SMS plans. *shrug*

  3. Michael — it might also be possible to do something with bluetooth,
    where I push my information from my phone to yours directly. Then
    there's no network usage.

    The other nice thing about bluetooth is that we could push more data
    than just the 160 characters. For example, I could use bluetooth to
    push a PDF with my resume, or a jpeg with my picture.

    Thanks for the comment!

  8. I actually do this kind of collecting information through phones whenever I attend conference and other meeting, it's a much convenient way of getting linked with each other.

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