There's a new MustHaveGadget™ for social networkers around the globe: the Poken. Or at least that's what the official website, the buzz both on identi.ca and Twitter and even a Google Tech Talk want to make us believe.

Pokens are small keyring pendants in the shape of a small creature with its hand extended for a high five… sorry, four. Sounds boring right? Well, the hand actually is a small RFID/NFC enabled USB stick (and the creature it's housing) that can exchange IDs with other Pokens and save it on its internal memory for later retrieval via any computer with a free USB port¹⁾ and a browser. With the saved IDs you actually collect the contacts of the people you touched Pokens with²⁾: once you synch up your Poken with the Poken website, the cards of your contacts are added to your profile. If one of your contacts now updates or adds to her details, you are still always up to date. Business card 2.0, outdated information on paper good bye.

I gotta admit, with all this fun hardware and ideas involved I got interested, and so I got demod and myself both one of those little devices to give it a go. And was quite disappointed. Not by the hardware – once activated and in high-five position with each other, the two Pokens immediately exchanged IDs and emitted a pulsing greenish light in their hands to inform us both about this crazy random happenstance. So I plugged in my Poken into my computer, opened the HTML page on the thumbdrive, got directed to the Poken Register-Your-Device webpage, registered and then wanted to fill in my profile. First thing that struck me as annoying: the list of social networks does neither include Friendfeed, nor identi.ca, Delicious, Youtube, … none of the networks I'm part of seem to exist in the Poken world, besides Xing and flickr. But ok, the whole thing is still new I thought to myself, and decided to add my XING profile. Which was when I recoiled in sudden terror at what was asked of me:

Wait a minute… They are seriously asking me for my XING password there? A quick check with a fake one revealed, yes, they are actually trying to log into my account. WTF? Shocked as I was, I clicked on the “Why do we ask for this info?” link conveniently placed right next to the password field – I wonder how it got there – and read the explanation. So, the Poken service wants to confirm that I'm actually entering the profile information regarding my account and not someone else's by logging into it with the data I provide. They state they do not save this data, but sorry, that simply is not sufficient for entrusting someone with my passwords in my book. And not only are there mechanisms for exactly this kind of verification issues already available, no, IMHO it is simply not necessary to verify this information as long as the Poken isn't anything else than an electronic business card. Nobody verifies what I print on my paper cards, so why did the Poken team decide they should?

Anyway… this password thing seriously ruined the whole Poken concept for me. I would have overlooked the quite strong Beta- or even Alpha-feel of the site³⁾ and the kind of irritating hype in some parts of the net regarding that device, but as long as the Poken people don't rethink their design regarding account verification, the Poken is nothing I can recommend to anyone. Too bad I already wasted good money on it.

Update: Andi seems to share my opinion about the Poken and also did a writeup.