Ask HN: Would you buy it? How Much? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you buy it? How Much?

3 pointsParameterOne8 comments

I'm selling magic numbers. They look like an IP address, ex. 9342.7663.0223.434. You put this on your business card as a replacement for all the other stuff (phone, fax, email, website, etc) so friends and customers only need that number to communicate with you anyway you want them too. You can email the number, fax the number, text the number, call the number, IM the number etc. How much would you pay for a magic number? Would you pay a set up fee? subscription? add services as you needed them?

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In a business context if a person wants to call me, I want them to have my phone number. If they want to email me, I want them to have my email address and so on.

The magic number is neither of those and the steps to obtaining my phone number or email address from it are non-obvious because they are not based on decades of cultural practice. They are also dependent on a third party whose servers might go down (even Amazon's servers go down).

Good luck.

Thanks brudgers. What if the number WAS your email address and the number WAS also your phone number and so on? And there were no more steps. How about then?

My email addresses tend to be more explicit and my phone numbers have portions that are normalized by exchanges and country codes.

Interesting, so you like that better because the phone# would let others know what country you are in and the email address is branding?

I use it because it works. Something without an implementation is not an alternative.

more thoughts.... what made you assume that there would be third party servers involved? And would you consider DNS or a telcom's central office switch a third party? Just curious.

For me, I don't see an advantage. If there was an implementation I'd have more to go on and might change my opinion.

Mind if I ask the industry you are in? Curious because some industries have different norms depending on niche.

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