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:
- 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.
- 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!
Posted on December 6th, 2008 by Jon Lim
Filed under: Technology
I have one and I keep it on my keychain for now. You’re right, I think it could really catch on with the younger generation. You know, if enough kids have one, they all want to have one.
Thanks for linking to my article!
It seemed interesting enough at first, and the very fact that you wanted to buy one made me sign up instantly (literally, I signed up before finishing reading the article!).
I admit I was a bit hasty with the registration. I watched the video afterwards and browsed around their site and found that the product was geared too much for kids or girls (or just young girls). To be honest, I wouldn’t be caught dead with something that cutesy on my keychain.
But maybe that’s just me. If they had designs that were a bit more gender and age neutral, I think I’d be all for being an early adopter.
If anything, this has been a lesson on the power of word of mouth. Thanks for sharing!
PS – Mashable’s take on Poken: http://mashable.com/2008/12/06/poken/. Summary: “File [Poken] under: cute ideas that are bound to fail.”
@Hugo – Agreed, but the problem with the youth generation is that they are extremely fickle and quick to change over from fads. While this could catch on, it could also drop like a fly!
@Verne – I think I went through the same thing, a very hasty registration and extreme enthusiasm for these little toys, but after a while it started dawning on me that Pokens are pretty much meant for very young kids by design. Kind of sucks that they’re not very age or gender neutral, but that means there’s a market opportunity!
Yeah after reading your article i was all like “YEAH”, and then the next thing in m feed list was Mashable’s take and some others, and all of a sudden i was like “MMM”, and now i just dunno.
@Satish – That is similar to the phases I went through with Poken.
COOL! -> Um… -> Oh. Nevermind.
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