Carded
For want of anything better to do with her time, and the BBC licence payers' money, Adrienne Murray asks the burning question of the day: Has Covid killed off business cards for good?
Before the pandemic a vast amount of business cards were being printed around the world. One estimate put it at 27 million per day, or more than seven billion each year.
Adrienne Murray, business reporter, BBC News
They may still be a big deal in Asia, where there are rituals involved in handing them over. Old skoolers might use business cards to establish the hierarchy in meetings. I guess that's more of a commercial business thing, but it hasn't been an important factor in technical business meetings for a long time, at least not in Europe.
Perhaps I don't get out enough, but I haven't handed out business cards for years. I haven't even bothered having them printed for my most recent two positions. The few that I've received have been tossed in a drawer, never to be handled again. Digital communications and virtual meetings have pretty much rendered them useless; e-signatures can at least be kept up-to-date.
Just the fax, ma'am
And more non-news on outdated business practices from Ashifa Kassam, for BBC Future.
She informs us that the Chongvirus is also putting paid to the fax machine. Yet another business tool that long ago saw its best before date, suddenly coming to the BBC's attention for its demise.
I don't recall sending more than two faxes in the six years that I've worked for MegaCorpCH, probably less than a dozen over the last twenty years. I'm pretty sure the only reason that we have a fax machine is because it came rolled into the multifunctional printer/scanner.
I wonder how many stand-alone fax machines are sold, or even still exist.