Let me introduce you to a very nifty idea that advances social networking – Poken.

Essentially, it’s a keychain that you carry around with you, and when you meet someone else who has a Poken, you hold them close together and your information is exchanged. Information being your LinkedIn or Facebook profile information, which you can take back home where it becomes a USB key, and you load your contacts onto the Poken website.

I’m going to go ahead and say this is going to catch on, especially with the younger generation. Why? The keychain you can carry around is easily customizable and they have great designs (For the youth) as seen here. It will make it a lot easier to exchange information without having to pull out your phones (But having an attachment to your phone would make it so much easier!)

Second, once the technology has advanced and has had plenty of customization, two things will be done:

  1. Designs of the individual Pokens can become less youth-centric and will create exposure and usability to a more professional crowd, allowing Poken to fully utilize its current integration with LinkedIn.
  2. Increase the capacity of the number of connections you can make before heading back to the computer. Currently it has a limit of 64 people, and for professionals, that might be a bit limiting when on the road! As it currently works, once you hit the limit of 64 people, it begins to erase the earlier connections in order to fit more.

Poken seems to have the recipe for success, and I would love to see this become much more than just a youth-centric initiative.

Anyone in Canada want to be early adopters, and jump in on an order of 12 Pokens with me? Comment and be sure to leave your contact information!