Let’s Mingle

I stumbled on a great idea today online!

It’s called a Mingle Stick and the idea is so simple it’s ingenious.

It’s a usb flash drive, one of those pocket-size media storage devices you can plug into the USB port on your computer.  It can store pictures, music and information.  The price of jump drives is so low [and I only buy them on sale] and the storage space so high, I store individual projects each on their own jump drive.    Jump drives are common place.  The kids have to have one for school to portable their computer work!  Nothing so innnovative about a jump drive.

This one has the storage function.  But it also has a ‘mingle’ function.  You wear the stick on a lanyard or keychain and your contact information is stored on one part of it.  When you meet someone you want to share your contact information with, you ‘mingle’, which is pointing your minglestick at their minglestick and pressing the button in it.  If the little light turns green, your contact information has been shared.   When you get to your computer, you plug in the USB and download the information for all your new contacts.

You can watch a video about it at this link.  But I warn you, their videos have really bad audio.  Still, you have to admit it’s a simple but useful tech idea.

The company that makes it talks about young people sharing their information this way at school, in clubs and in college.  I don’t see it.

This is an adult toy!  Not everything works for the young demo.  What keeps it from working among sports clubs and parent teams and family reunions, etc. is the cost.

The usb is 2GB. They sell for $19.95 each.  By comparison, I bought a 4GB jump drive on sale [after rebate] for $7.99 at Staples the other day.  But it didn’t hold my contact information.  In reality, buying one does you no good because you have no one to ‘mingle’ with if you’re the only one.  You do get a reduced cost buying in lots:  $1,795.00 for 100 [17.95 a piece] or $7995.00 for 500 [15.99 ea] and you can get them with your group or company logo on them: $8995.00 for 500 [17.99 ea].

The bigger the group, the lower the per unit cost the more opportunities to ‘mingle’, the smarter the idea gets.    The fact is, it is the perfect tool for trade shows and in large networking groups.    Goodbye business cards.  No more going home juggling a stack.

I didn’t gt anything from the Mingle 360 people to write this blog.  I came across the product doing my daily surfing and thought it was a cool thing, simple and easy to use.  So, I wanted to tell you about it.  But if you buy one on their site by clicking through this site, I will get a couple of bucks from the sale.  Right now, they only sell them through their web site so that’s how they drive traffic.