Would you like to be able to exchange more postcards at the same time? If so, then we might have some good news for you!

If we could just choose, we would love to allow everyone to send as many as they wish. However, limits are necessary in Postcrossing to keep the system balanced for everyone and also to keep the project safe. But we know that the current limits are particularly hard on new members who want to get started quickly and must wait for their limits to grow slowly. So, we have been working on a way to allow new Postcrossers to exchange more postcards, while still having the required limits - by adjusting them slightly.

Today we are doing an update on the formula for limits in Postcrossing. From now onwards, the limit for new accounts will start to increase after the first 5 postcards sent (and registered). Afterwards, the number of postcards you can send will increase by 1 for each 10 postcards sent (it was for each 20, so it grows twice as fast!). After the first 35 postcards sent, it increases by 1 on each multiple of 50 postcards sent.

We know this might sound a little confusing, so we made a little graph to explain the difference between before and after. Here it is:

As you see, the limits grow faster initially, allowing the account to reach a more comfortable level sooner.

How does this affect you? If you have sent under 100 postcards so far, you will be seeing an increase on your limit between 1 and 3 extra postcards. But not only new members get to send extra postcards: if you have already sent 100 postcards or more, then you'll have one extra postcard as well. That's right! Everyone gets (at least) one extra postcard with these changes - merry Christmas! :).

The limit continues to increase up until 100 traveling postcards - we believe that should be more than enough for everyone. And of course, it is the limit that we are changing - you are free to send any amount you want within your quota. You can learn more about the new limits here.

We are quite excited about these updates and we hope you'll enjoy these changes. Happy Postcrossing everyone! :)

We have been quite busy lately with tweaks and improvements to Postcrossing! Here are some of the things we are excited about:

Twitter integration

If you have a twitter.com account, this feature is for you! Postcrossing can now automatically publish your events (for instance, when you send or register a postcard) to your twitter stream. And it's really easy to setup!

More stats

Do you like statistics? We have been improving these, adding more graphics and information to the stats page. Let us know what else you would like to see in there.

Improved invite friends

Have many friends that might like Postcrossing? Too hard to remember all of their cryptic email addresses? No problem! Now it's much simpler to invite friends in Postcrossing because you can import your contacts from your Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and MSN accounts easily. We have used the latest technology available to make it really safe, so you don't have to give us your email account username and password. Give it a try to see what we mean.

And many more to come! We know you have suggestions for changes and improvements for the project and we'd love to hear them - while we can't promise to do all of them, we will certainly look into it so give us a shout!

Over these 2 years, the most requested feature we received here at Postcrossing headquarters was from users that wanted to send more than 5 postcards at a time. We hesitated and thought about the issue for a long time... until we decided on a fair way to implement this change.

So, from now on, the number of postcards you can send will depend on the number of postcards you have already sent. This should encourage new users to (slowly) test the system, while allowing more experienced users to send more postcards.

The new limits for the postcards you can send (ie, have simultaneously traveling) are now:

• If you have sent between 0 and 19 postcards, you can send 5 postcards.
• If you have sent between 20 and 39 postcards, you can send 6 postcards.
• If you have sent between 40 and 59 postcards, you can send 7 postcards.
• If you have sent between 60 and 79 postcards, you can send 8 postcards.
• If you have sent between 80 and 99 postcards, you can send 9 postcards.
• If you have sent between 100 and 149 postcards, you can send 10 postcards.
• If you have sent between 150 and 199 postcards, you can send 11 postcards.
• If you have sent between 200 and 249 postcards, you can send 12 postcards.
• ... and so on, in increments of 1 postcard for each 50 you send.

For instance, if you have sent 21 postcards, you can have at most 6 postcards traveling simultaneously to other users.
Please note that since this feature is currently being tested, adjustments to these limits may occur in the future.

Also, did anyone notice there is now a column of random little avatar pictures in each country page? Check it out on the country pages of Turkey, Spain, Brazil or China or look up a specific country on the countries' list.