Sunday, July 6, 2014

Postcrossing

by Bert Carson
photo by Hans-Georg Beyer - Germany
If you follow this blog or my main blog site, you know that I've gotten into a vintage social media (hand written letters) in a big way.  Thanks to InCoMoWri, I've acquired a number of pen pals around the planet.

Now, thanks to Postcrossing, I've established international links with even more real people.  Postcrossing (contact links below) is a free postcard exchange service for people interested in exchanging post cards with other people around the world.

The concept in a sentence is, "Send a post card and receive a postcard back from a random person in the world."

There's just one catch.  Unlike internet social media, once you receive a postcard, the person who sent it stops being a random person to you.  That's not a catch actually.  In fact, its the marvel of Postcrossing.

Here's a real life example of how it works.  Postcrossing gave me Hans-Georg Beyer, of Germany, as a recipient for a postcard.  I read his profile and saw he was interested in Lighthouses.  On June 24th, I sent him a postcard with a photo of Highlands Lighthouse (from the Cape Code lighthouse postcard book I purchased from Amazon.com).  When Hans-Georg received the card he registered it on Postcrossing and commented that he liked it.  I received his notification of receipt along with his comment via email.  That meant two things.  First, I could request another address and second, I could respond to Hans-Georg's message via email.

I did both.  The following day I had another comment from Hans-Georg through Postcrossing.  Through our email correspondence, which began with a postcard, I learned that, among a number of other things, he is an amateur photographer who displays his work on fotocommunity.  I asked him if I could use one of his photos to illustrate this blog post and he quickly agreed.

If you would like to know more about Postcrossing, here's the link.  If you want to know more about the creator of Postcrossing and the team that makes it happen, here's the link.

In our impersonal world, which is growing more virtual every day, Postcrossing is a breath of fresh air.  Pick up a few postcards, sign up, request an address, or two, or as many as five to start with, and start writing and mailing.

If you aren't quite sure - take a minute and watch this delightful video of real people around the world mailing postcards.

Five years of smiles @ Postcrossing! from meiadeleite on Vimeo.







2 comments:

  1. David,
    I think you'll enjoy it.
    Bert

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  2. Hans-Georg just emailed some info about his photo:
    About the photo: It is showing homecoming crabfishers in East Frisia, a part of the North Coast in Germany. It is our famous place of vacation in autumn. Best place for relaxing an recreation. Typical are the crabfishes, they call it "Granat". You can only get on that coastline.
    Thanks again my friend.
    Bert

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