Cardcloud wants to take business cards online by adding location and context

Cardcloud launches (or relaunches) today as another take on the virtual business card. Its app, which runs on iPhone and in the browser, is built on top of the vCard standard so enabling cards to be exchanged across multiple platforms – a bit like ‘beaming’ cards to a Palm Pilot back in the day – but it’s the bespoke features of Cardcloud that potentially make it stand out.

In addition to standard contact details, users can visually customize their cards by adding profile pictures and/or their company logo, along with linking their account to over 50 online profile or social services, such as the usual suspects LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. So that’s social media covered. However, it’s the ability to add context and ‘memory’ to the exchange of business cards that has the most value.

This is achieved through a mix of recording the date and location of when/where a card was first swapped, along with offering the option to write notes on the back of each card, virtually of course. These can then be referred to later either via the mobile app or on the Cloudcard website.

Lastly, the contact details of a received card can be added to a user’s mobile phone address book or kept separately on their Cloudcard account or both. The app also supports multiple accounts or ‘cards’ for users who wear two or more hats as it were.

Cardcloud is based in Amsterdam, having originally founded as a hardware company called ‘My Name is E’. It won The Next Web’s startup competition back in 2009.

Cardcloud for iPhone from Cardcloud on Vimeo.