Are Postcards Past Their Use-by Date?
Posted May 17th, 2008 by lizI love sending postcards. It’s a great way of keeping in contact with family and friends while traveling foreign lands. Sometimes, the postcards are sent as a ‘look where I am’, other times as a ‘wish you were here’, but mostly they’re sent to share my travel antedotes, events, and experiences.
But a recent San Francisco Chronicle article is suggesting that sending travel postcards is almost a dying art.
Turns out that while those at home still check their mailboxes daily for glimpses of foreign lands, we travelers are too busy blogging, emailing, and photo-txting to find the time to sit and put pen to postcard.
As one executive of a West Coast Company that distributes postcards states in the SFC article, technology has changed the way we communite when traveling.
“It’s [too] easy to take a picture of yourself at the Golden Gate Bridge with your camera phone and email it to a friend. In five seconds, it’s done.”
Postcards take so much longer. First you have to find one and then work out what to write. Then there’s finding a stamp and a mailbox. And of course, there is no guarantee that the postcard will arrive home before you do or that it will arrive at all.
So what do you think?
Are postcards on the edge of extinction?
When was the last time you sent one?
May 17th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Oh, please NO! I LOVE postcards, love getting them, love sending them. Lately,though, what I do is make my own from my pics and send them out at the end of the year (don’t be calling them a Xmas card).
I didn’t send them while I was traveling, but I have two sitting Right Here to send as soon as I have the pics I want to send with them printed up.
May 18th, 2008 at 4:06 am
There’s just something about a postcard - the one’s you send and the one’s you keep for yourself. But the digital age does make it easier to forget about buying and sending them when you are travelling.
May 25th, 2008 at 4:02 am
I love getting postcards too! It’s a nice surprise in your mailbox and feels so much more personal. I’m always on the lookout for cool postcards in Tokyo and have been dropping a couple in the mail each week to friends and family.
June 7th, 2008 at 12:04 am
I think using postcard still valuable right now and in a future. Because inside postcard we can see real pict of country where postcard come from. Also real date and stamp from that country. Good for collection and maybe this is could be great hobbies by collecting foreign postcard we get.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:34 am
I really it is. With all the technologies today, it is not that hard to happen. Postcards are this days are slight becoming obsolete.
Jim
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