Talkin’ Bout a MOOvolution: The MOO Card Phenomenom

Of all the things that I’m psychotically obsessed with, business cards and printable items really aren’t on that list. I admit, I took great pride in my Advanced Media Network business cards because I edited the color of the cards everyone else had and made them fuschia instead. Yes, I am quite the renegade. Anyways, I was quite pleased with those cards but they’re pricey and damn are they hard to adjust. Business card manufacturers are known to be picky with sizes, the bleed factor of your images. It gets obnoxious.

What MOO did is they took the guesswork and frustration out of printing what you want. Whether it be business cards, invitations, just general notifications of your life in general - MOO makes it simplistic. They give you the tools, with templates and choices that give you more freedom than you ever had before. Within ten minutes, I had designed cards that had both cute little witty comments on the front (In beautiful colors.) and on the back it listed my various blogs and my AIM name. TEN MINUTES and those cards were being processed to be made.

When they arrived, they weren’t kidding. The MOO Mini-Cards were small, at least half the size of your average business card but they were very well made. A nice thick card stock with a vellum finish that makes the card not glossy, but almost gives it a matte laminate look. Nothing fuzzy to these cards either, they were crisp and sharp and good for the eyes. MOO doesn’t make bad product, they make hard product simple and they do it beautifully.

What I noticed after perusing the cards is that there were different Flickr sets popping up all over the place where people showed off their MOO and just what they were using them for. Some people made “Thank You” cards for their wedding gifts, some people put their website’s name and information and would sprinkle them in subways and in airplane seating. Some people just made those cards up as a conversation piece and took pictures of all the different places they left their “MOOs”. If anything, MOO gave people an extension of how to start a dialog between strangers and that’s a pretty cool idea, if you ask me.

Over at Flickr, we have a Photoset so you can see some of the different card sets that MOO provided us with. MOO will also be taking the place of the official card for TEK — and you’ll see a Moo logo up on our front page in the very near future. Also stay tuned for an awesome “TEK Support” feature in which we walk you through how to make your very own mini-cards, with video and everything. After the jump you’ll find an awesome interview with Richard Moross, CEO and Founder of MOO, and hear why he started MOO and just what’s on HIS cards.

Did I mention these brilliant bastards are coming out with Stickers in a week? I’m so there.

CandiceTEK: Moo seems to be a company with focus on putting creativity and control back into the hands of artists and photographers with their own self-promotion; what stemmed this kind of project?

Richard Moross: I came up with the idea in the middle of the night after I realized how many modes of communication my 17 year old sister had compared to my 40 year old father - she was on IM, cell phone, email, etc and the idea was
clear to me. My dad gets business cards, but my sister who had all these modes of communication still had to scribble her details on a piece of paper when she met someone new. I wanted to create a networking tool for consumers.

I saw a huge market opportunity in the greeting and business card industry because they haven’t innovated in virtually their entire existence. I also noticed that people today spend more and more of their time online, shaping their online identities with digital photos, virtual worlds, and social networking websites. MOO is a way for peopleto represent their online identities in the real world.

CandiceTEK: How long did it take to get the word of Moo out there and when did you realize it’s popularity was growing?

Richard Moross: We had a ton of digerati friends test our products about a month or so before we launched. On the day of our launch (September 19, 2006), BoingBoing posted a blog about us that literally crashed our servers. We received orders for nearly 1 million cards in our first month.

In addition, our partners which include Flickr, Bebo, Fotolog, Habbo Hotel, Second Life, LiveJournal, and Vox reach over 100 million end users.

CandiceTEK: The community within Moo seems to be flourishing, where people have Flickr accounts dedicated to where they take their Mini-cards and the things they’ve accomplished with the cards they’ve created; did you expect it?

Richard Moross: We’re really impressed by what the creative community of Moo is capable of dreaming up. 90% of our ideas come from customers - every time someone buys MOO cards they do something different with them. When we came up with the idea for MOO, we were amazed by the amount of content people stored online. We wanted to give people an outlet to bring their online identities offline.

CandiceTEK: What do YOUR Moo cards look like?

Richard Moross:My MOO cards feature pictures of myself, my travels, my friends and family, and other interesting photos I’ve taken. They’re a real conversation starter. I fan them out and can tell a story about my life with my cards.

Thanks to Richard Moross and Jamie Walker over at MOO for all their contributions to this interview and article, keep tuned in for the MOO WalkthROO coming soon to TEK Support!

(We had a slight miscommunication and accidentally put Jamie Walker as the CEO and Founder of MOO when it’s actually Richard Moross. Sorry guys! - Candice)