Entrepreneur and friend of Minnov8, Lief Larson of Workface, Inc and BusinessCard2 in Minneapolis, has leapt forward on his vision to make BusinessCard2 the delivery mechanism to, “…empower business people to create, promote, and broadcast their unique professional persona throughout the internet” by acquiring Card.ly.
Any offering like BusinessCard2 requires critical mass to be effective. The more that people adopt and use this free service, the more powerful it becomes. As Lief has accelerated the number of people using the service, he and his team won’t be satisified until it becomes the primary way people encapsulate their value propositions and is a one-stop-shop for contact info, marketing of products and services, and even more portable on the web than it is today.
For competitive purposes Lief keeps intentionally quiet on disclosures of the exact reasons for this acquisition, but I suspect the customer base was one reason (that critical mass imperative is why) but undoubtedly there was other value not readily apparent that makes this a smart move for Workface.
The press release is after the jump. Congrats Lief and team!
Workface buys card.ly
MINNEAPOLIS (September 1, 2010) – Workface Inc. completed its purchase of card.ly from Massachusetts based Harkness Labs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition will help Minneapolis-based Workface bring its technology to a larger user base.
Card.ly was launched in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Dan Blake, who also created the wildly popular video chat service, Tinychat. “Card.ly is a great service and it has tens of thousands of incredible users,” said Blake. “With the success of Tinychat we haven’t put more work into card.ly, but I thought it was important to find a good home for the service because I’m fully behind the need for an Internet business card.”
In 2007 Workface released BusinessCard2®, a rich interactive business card for the Internet. The company has been operating BusinessCard2 as an ongoing concern ever since. “Even in this challenging economy, we have been blessed to find opportunity and growth with BusinessCard2,” said Larson. “Our mission is to digitally interface business people with customers in a way that preserves the human condition and card.ly allows us to further that mission.”
At this time card.ly users will be unaffected, but Workface plans to integrate card.ly into BusinessCard2 in the months to come. “We’re very excited to bring these two services and visionary users together into a single, larger offering,” said Larson. “The result will be the leading network of interactive, web-enabled business cards on the Internet today.”
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About Workface Inc.
Workface Inc. was founded in 2006 with the vision of humanizing the Internet and powering localized and relevant 1:1 real-time engagement. The company’s Workface® platform is customer engagement software that enables businesses to empower their sales and service force to digitally engage directly with customers on their corporate and third-party websites, search engines and mobile, in real-time. More information: http://workfaceinc.com.
About BusinessCard2
BusinessCard2 is a self-marketing tool designed to empower business people to create, promote, and broadcast their unique persona throughout the Internet. It is an open business tool that features improved identity-level search engine optimization, the ability to share business cards on select websites and social media, uploading of more than forty different file types, and engagement through messaging and live chat. More information: http://card2.com.
Contact:
Lief Larson, CEO Dan Blake
Workface Inc. Harkness Labs.
larson (at) workface.com and dan (at) harknesslabs.com
Phone: 612-310-5051
http://lieflarson.businesscard2.com