Business card = social networking?

Fast Company's blog references a company called EGO Cards -- the EGO stands for Everyone's Got One.

EGO produces unique business cards at the price of $1,100.00 per 1,000 (although it sounds like there might be price breaks if you were making bulk orders) that are designed to be used as marketing tools and differentiate your business card from the stack someone received at a trade convention or found in their wallet. The cards include links to the EGO site, where "members" can link up with and contact other "members" (i.e., socially network).

Asking yourself what the point of spending this amount of money on business cards is? Well, from the website, EGO has the answers:

FACT 1
How many business cards do you get that you throw away or lose? The fact is, the same thing happens to your cards. At least 80% of your cards get lost in the shuffle... your E.G.O. card won't!

FACT 2
A business card like this would be hard not to remember.

FACT 3
EXTRA MILEAGE! After someone receives an E.G.O. card they often get shown to other people.

FACT 4
Your company is only as good as your people... these cards market your people!

FACT 5
You are joining a network of people who share the vision that you don't have to be boring to do business.

FACT 6
There is a synergy developing among E.G.O. members because they are collecting each others cards.

FACT 7
Millions of dollars are spent on marketing that will never achieve results... results are immediate with E.G.O.

Fact #8 -- $1,100 is a really high cost of entry for a social networking site and a pretty high cost per card for 1,000 business cards, even with the design fees included.

Personally, I think the service would do better if they had a library of pre-designed templates and graphics that you could populate with information to print your own cards at home. Maybe they charge a monthly subscription rate plus a one-time deign fee to make the pricing more attractive, and offer custom design and printing services as premium products.

Just my $0.02