Poken, those little thingers that you touch together to trade contact info we talked about last SXSW, are now smaller. The Poken Pulse is a 2GB memory key with Poken RFID scanning built in. When you tap your Poken onto another person’s Poken it trades contact information and, um, to quote the website “we’re glowin’ green, killin’ two ‘birds,’ and savin’ trees.”
Right.
Anyway, the Pulse costs $34.95 and is available at StartPoken.com.
I played with the older Poken a while back and if you have lots of friends with Poken, they’re a good idea. Sadly, if you and your friends have one you can only trade with them once. So once you’ve blown your Poken wad, you’re kind of stuck.
They seem really big in Germany….
Nope, same size world wide.
Harry “har, har, har” Wang
Belo, OK!
Sounds gay but maybe its just me.
Are you saying you don’t like the idea or that you’ve decided to become a homosexual?
Their .ca site sucks. Slow, no FAQ’s, text doubled up and not formatted. How good can the product be?
CA_Startup – I apologize for the site performance. All the sites are being overhauled. Expect a much better front end experience next month. I can promise you, the product rocks!
Nifty idea man but WOW they are freaking huge.
you need to seriously shrink down the size big time. One idea would be to make it like a “wafer” where it can slide under the battery cover of my cell phone and have two flat ribbon contacts that come out so I can lay them over the positive and negative on the phone.
Now the PHONE is the poken and provides the power. touch phones and you trade contacts.
or make it 1/3 the size it is now. when I saw the cute little characters for some reason I was thinking the size of quarter but man they are truly massive!
Shrink them down!
Since they take a critical mass to be useful, might make good corporate holiday gifts.
Jmarten – you hit the nail on the head. While critical mass is something any company wishes for, it’s a work in progress. It is still very early. Corporate Gifting is one of several very applicable concepts. Custom printing and some other very interesting vanity features are available for organizations. To add, there will be an extensive API just around the corner, as well other very interesting features and solutions. Stay tuned!
Who bought the first fax machine?
It feels like that sort of problem.
The best way to solve this, I think, is to give them away at a trade show (or sell them to the trade show organizer). Perhaps PRE-LOAD them with the attendee’s info.
Maybe you’ve already done this.
But I don’t see myself “buying” one anytime soon.
Or, to save money, just deadpool it now. As stated in the post, they already shot their wad.
wow. We go to a lot of restaurant trade shows, and this would be sooooo useful. If everyone that signed up to attend and exhibit the conference got one it would be fantastic!! Currently we have to rent those stupid machines which are like 500 bucks.
Just for numbers sake, the NRA show in Chicago had around 40,000 attendees and 7000 exhibitors. That would be sweet.
Russ – contact me at rhuitt at startpoken dot com. I have a solution for you.
I like the original because it was fun, this one even more because it’s practical. I don’t care if anyone else has one, I’ll just stay home poken myself!
Weirdly enough, the country where they are the most successful is the Netherlands… with the Dutch… :)
And Switzerland obviously since Stéphane the founder studied here in Lausanne
This is true. I have also noticed that Poken users in the Netherlands are mostly Dutch.
Since most of the Dutch don’t work, wonder what their primary purpose of trading contact details would be for.
thank you for this heads up, but mostly for this:
‘“we’re glowin’ green, killin’ two ‘birds,’ and savin’ trees.”’
‘So once you’ve blown your Poken wad, you’re kind of stuck.’
and the weatherman’s comment about staying home and poking oneself.
this is an amazing product name and it seems like a good idea for students.
their customized pokens is a good idea.
might be the dumbest most useless product i’ve ever seen. cant my phone do this? yes, yes it can.
Your phone can do this. Really? I know you can from iPhone to iPhone. And even that app is somewhat of a hack.
Unless there is some kind of universal cell phone app that does this, then I think this is a decent idea. For now at least.
NOBODY needs another piece of HARDWARE!
Somebody please just write that piece of SOFTWARE to go on the iPhone and Android.
Thanks for stopping wasting our time with stupid toys like this one.
Jeez, don’t have a heart attack, man.
yeah i was thinking that if i’m in a class and i want to share info with my friends i can already do that from my phone, but i think this is more practical in a class setting and for actual work and not just conversation.
Poken is like an iPhone with Bump installed? This has no future unless it will be a hype on primary schools
we’ll see how this blows up first. No reason Apple can’t do this either.
I’ve had one since the beginning (and I’m Dutch) but up to this day I’ve never met anyone with a poken. Big flop unless ofcourse they start giving these things away at large corporations (with customized prints as someone els mentioned. I actually tried this at TNT without succes
I’m afraid to go to their website for fear that it may get me fired from my job.
It sounds like a competitor of adult friend finder.
The idea is kind of cool. However I dont see how they ever got funded. As stated above, these things are worthless unless a ton of people have them. And who’s going to be the first to buy? I think it will take a free give away of the devices for them to take off. Personally I dont need another thing on my keychain. This seems like Beaming your contact info back in 1997 from Palm to Palm. Nobody used that either ;)
Ah I have so many profitable ideas. If I could get 1/100 of the seed money spent on this I would change the world (and make a profit). Ok probably not change the world but I could get that Oil Change I keep putting off.
good luck with the product anyway. takes balls to do anything like this.
i think that it would be good if they could build a larger user base for this. what they should do is introduce them for free in markets with a cap on space, and then offer better versions for money. either way it’s not that expensive and the design is fun. i think this could have good traction among students and hipsters of all ages.
do they have a chimpokoman one yet? I would maybe get one if it had Cartman on it. Course I suppose they have to license the image and cut back on some more profit ;)
How about they make a deal with Mountain Dew or Red Bull.
Both have active sports tours and big sponsors in alt sports.
Give away an EXTREMEMEMEME mountian dew one in each 12pack.
then they might get some traction.
Or give them to Middle schools as the welcome back to school package.
excelent gadget
Curious how long these will last because “there’s an app for that”.
Great stuff. I have one, fun to use!
Can the real non-astroturfers please stand up?
i went to an event where every one had pokens, it was crazy cool! i dont think events will be handing out smart phones anytime soon lol.
This company should be aggressively pithing all major cell phone companies to include this technology in cell phones. Then you would have something special. Otherwise this seems like a gimmick.
I like the idea. It’s easy to use… I will order one :-)
Use a business card instead. It gives an immediate impression of who you are and what you do – unlike a bunch of invisible data.
Build one into an iPhone case and call it a day…
If I whipped out one of these glorified blinking usb sticks at a meeting, I’d look like the biggest effing idiot.
why would you need to poken your friends? aren’t you already connected to them on your SNS already?
And why 2GB? It’s just storing account info isn’t it? You’d think they could do that with a couple of megs.
“…once you’ve blown your Poken wad, you’re kind of stuck.” LOL
It’s a great concept but a tonne of people need to have one in order for it to be really useful. I love their branding and the product looks cool and fun, however if there is no one for me to poke then I’m pretty much just masturbating :P
What about licensing their technology to other social networks and dating sites as a way to monetize?
Based on hardware…. just not going to work. Maybe in a limited space… exchanging contact info at a conference where every badge has one.
Otherwise simple SMS codes (disclose I am working with a company doing this) will cover 90% of any market. Everyone has a mobile phone.
This venture serves as the poster child for why the venture capital industry is so screwed up. Who funded this? They should be ashamed.
It’s not about how many times you poken with friends but if your friends changes his phonenumber or decides to add another link of a community website you’re automatically kept up to date. Your phone doesn’t do that. You can create online business cards or download designs for free. If you think further then average usage the possibilities are endless. hey, while you’re interested in poken and reading these comments, why don’t you check out the poken song while you’re at it?