Comments on: Postcrossing

Postcrossing

Baud — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:00:45 -0800

you've got new postcrossed mail You have heard of geocaching. You have heard of Bookcrossing. Here comes Postcrossing. The main idea is that: if you send a postcard, you'll receive at least one back, from a random Postcrosser from somewhere in the world.

The goal of postcrossing is to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world, for free. Well, for the price of the stamp you put on the postcards you need to send if you wish to get one from someone you never met. You can have up to 5 postcards traveling at any single time. Every time one of the postcards you sent is registered, you can request another address. I bought my first postcrossed postcard in Brussels' touristy district today and will mail it somewhere in Finland tomorrow.

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:37:30 -0800

Someone alert jessamyn!

By: rmd1023

rmd1023 — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 09:12:48 -0800

i was about to say, "jessamyn west, please call your office"

By: Staggering Jack

Staggering Jack — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 09:55:22 -0800

I've been buying used copies of the Griffin and Sabine books and have been longing for some postcards from mysterious lands. Thanks for the, um, post.

By: Dizzy

Dizzy — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 09:56:30 -0800

I was too late, but what crossed my mind was, "Hmmm, maybe rmd1023 should tell Meatbomb to alert jess."

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:04:23 -0800

Not to be a wet blanket, but I wonder what the carbon footprint is to mail an international postcard.

By: stevil

stevil — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:04:34 -0800

I remember this from the last time it was popular when it was called umm, chain letters.

By: WalterMitty

WalterMitty — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:33:49 -0800

Not to be a wet blanket, but I wonder what the carbon footprint is to mail an international postcard. Wet blankets are good things... they put out the fires fuelled by zealous postcard exchanging. And we all know FIRES CONTRIBUTE TO GLOBAL WARMING. Unless they aren't wet enough, then they become part of the problem. It also depends on the size of the postcard-exchanging fuelled fires.

By: DU

DU — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:56:55 -0800

I came in here because my wife would probably love this and....whoa, Griffin and Sabine. My wife used to love them! I didn't know there were more! She might just have a very merry xmas.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 11:15:47 -0800

Hey, cool...I was thinking of posting this (heh) just a few days ago, but you've done a much better job than I would have. It should become quite a popular site, I think, and it seems to be a purely amateur thing.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 11:22:57 -0800

Not to be a wet blanket, but I wonder what the carbon footprint is to mail an international postcard. Not to be a wet blanket, but it's a reasonably safe bet that just about everything you're wearing, plus more than half the goods in your house were made in China.

By: misha

misha — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:02:38 -0800

Hey, I signed up, and I think it is a great idea. Maybe I will end up crossing postcards with another Mefite! I am waiting on some stickers in the mail before I can send them out in the big Sticker Swap. I'm such a mail whore.

By: semmi

semmi — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:52:48 -0800

I got a card from Uganda offering money.

By: Laotic

Laotic — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:13:47 -0800

Sounds like a great vicious scheme of Big Post to increase profits. Way to go viral hoes.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:36:26 -0800

Laotic: they might be shills, of course, but the people behind the website don't seem much like corporate whores. More significantly, around 90% of mail volume remains business-generated (bills, statements etc), and mail - in Australia, at least - is actually a loss maker. The profits come from things like warehousing, logistics, retail sales & transactions such as banking & bill payments. These other business streams actually subsidise the ability of people to send small bits of paper to each other for next to nothing, so there's no reason why "Big Post" would really want to increase personal mail volumes.

By: govtdrone

govtdrone — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:08:27 -0800

So far I have sent out 104 postcards. I have always liked writing letters and sending postcards so this is pretty cool. Heck, I used to have a pen pal I got from the old TV show Big Blue Marble.

By: lahersedor

lahersedor — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:41:24 -0800

There's also dawdlr if you wish to send tweets (sort of) via postcards.

By: arcticwoman

arcticwoman — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:07:43 -0800

I signed up and just got my first address. I'll try to send it out today. Yay! Snail mail!

By: laacz

laacz — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:22:11 -0800

Are there any other similar projects? Bookcrossing, Postcrossing, Geocaching. Anything else like that? And, yes, offline version of twitter is neat :)

By: carbide

carbide — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:21:44 -0800

PostcardX has been doing something very similar for years. I get the bonus of not having your address public, but the limit on postcards in transit seems like something just right for bigger exchanges (books, etc) , whereas it's a dampener on serendipity here... Dawdlr is a really lovely concept, also.