spreading jam

@lhuga told me about Poken recently; a social media craze that’s apparently booming in Japan.

Basically, you have a little plastic character that has a USB hand.  This hand has a chip in it that stores your contact details for whichever networks you use and when you touch it against another Poken (dubbed “high fouring”) you swap these details.  You then plug the hand into your computer to download contacts.

I think this is quite fun, and a conventient way of trading your info when you meet people in person.  However, it’s a bit cutesy, and packaging the idea in a business card format (a bit like the business card USB sticks you get) would create a larger potential audience.

Poken definitely has the potential to become a mainstream technology, but escaping the novelty image could be key to this success.