Say [Hi] to CardMunch 2.0

Since our initial launch in August 2018, HiHello has introduced many new features in the HiHello app, including more ways to share your digital HiHello cards with others, and more options to personalize your cards. Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of our latest major feature: human-verified business card scanning.

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Déjà vu anyone? If this sounds familiar, it’s because it should. We like to think of this latest feature of HiHello as “CardMunch 2.0.” For anyone who doesn’t remember, CardMunch launched in 2010 and provided the most accurate business card transcription by relying on a human workforce. CardMunch was acquired by LinkedIn in 2011, but languished within LinkedIn, and was ultimately palmed off by LinkedIn to Evernote. Like many of the users of CardMunch (according to the TechCrunch article, CardMunch had about 50,000 cards being scanned per day!), we too were disappointed that LinkedIn gave up on CardMunch, and we’re determined to bring it back. And this time we’re focused on building an independent company to ensure we can solve this problem once and for all.

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HiHello is on a mission to change how we connect with the people we meet in the real world. At HiHello we believe that “Who you know is often more important than what you know” and we’re building the tools to help you curate and grow your most valuable asset: your network.

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We launched with the ability to create and curate multiple digital business cards that you can easily share with anyone with a smartphone — without them needing an app for it. We recently added the ability for someone who you’ve shared your HiHello card with to be able to send their details back to you as a digital contact.

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Even though you’re hip and using HiHello cards, you may still receive a paper business card from some of the people you meet. HiHello’s new card scanning feature is built for exactly those situations, allowing you to build your network, no matter how you receive someone’s contact info.

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Currently, if you receive a business card from someone, that piece of paper is not very useful since it has digital information presented in paper form. A paper business card doesn’t enter your everyday workflow (i.e. in email for most of us) and doesn’t get captured in the address book on your desktop or your phone easily. Any time you want to contact that person, you’d have to shuffle through all of your business cards to find that one card.

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With HiHello’s card scanning, you can scan the paper business card to add their contact information into your contacts, and also receive their information in your email so that you can act on it from within your daily workflow.

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HiHello relies on a human workforce for providing the most accurate transcription of the paper business cards into contacts. Despite all the buzz you’ve heard about AI and ML, you want your contacts to be accurate and unfortunately even the most state-of-the-art automated solutions simply haven’t proven to be good enough. Using humans means that it costs us to transcribe each card. To ensure that we can provide this service sustainably for our users for the foreseeable future, we’re also introducing HiHello subscription plans.

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Our free offering allows all users of our app to scan up to 5 business cards per month (30 days). With HiHello’s paid subscriptions plans users can get more monthly human-verified card scans in addition to other features, and unlimited scans with our Power plan of $20/month (paid annually in advance).

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Users can now scan old and new cards in a quick, easy-to-use method that is human-verified to ensure complete accuracy. It’s time to tame the stack of cards taking over your desk and scan your cards right into your contacts. And the next time you meet someone who attempts to give you a paper business card, you can simply scan the card using HiHello and hand the paper card right back to them! To make this easy we’ve even added a scan button in the HiHello widget. Save yourself the hassle and the work of transcribing it, and save a few trees while you’re at it.

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Get started by downloading the HiHello app on either the App Store or the Play Store.

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We welcome your feedback and your input on what else you would like to see us build to solve the contact exchange problem. Please feel free to email us at support@hihello.me.

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And if you’re already a user who loves HiHello, we’d sincerely appreciate your help in spreading the word, and an extra special thank you from our team if you’re willing to leave us a review on the App Store or the Play Store!

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Thank you!

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