Postcrossing Blog

Postcrossing headquarters is cheerfully celebrating this incredible milestone of 2 million received postcards! :) Thank you so much for making this possible through your lovely postcards!

Of course you’re all itching to know who were the lucky members that exchanged this special postcard, so here’s the screenshot of the action:

Postcard 2 million travelled from Muffins in Germany, to coveralls1 in Norway!

Congratulations to these 2 members! And despite the many tries nobody guessed the countries. We’ll be organizing another contest soon to give that prize away.

When Postcrossing started, there was only a wish that a few users would join to try it. A few weeks after launch, that goal got overwhelmingly reached and hundreds of postcards started to be exchanged across different countries. It was a great success, but still, reaching millions was only a dream back then.

Now, over 3 years later, we are almost reaching 2 million exchanged postcards. What an amazing milestone! So many smiles have been created, several friendships have been seeded, more understanding and cultural awareness has been generated. Postcrossing is making the world a smaller placer, and we couldn’t be prouder. :)

Therefore, we want to tell the whole world about Postcrossing and this achievement. We want to reach even more people and make them smile too. And here’s where you can help!

It’s simple: we have created a press release about Postcrossing and the 2 million postcards mark to send to the media. All you need to do is download it and send it to your local newspapers, radio, TV, favourite news website, all counts! Help spread the word about Postcrossing and making this community larger.

With the help of many of you, we already translated the press release into several languages (thank you!), but feel free to translate to your own (or just use the English one) if you don’t find it here.

• English: DOC, PDF
• German: DOC, PDF
• Portuguese: DOC, PDF
• Spanish: DOC, PDF
• Finnish: DOC, PDF
• Italian: DOC, PDF
• Chinese: DOC, PDF
• Dutch: DOC, PDF
• Slovenian: DOC, PDF
• Swedish: DOC, PDF
• Romanian: DOC, PDF

We thank you in advance for all the help on spreading the word about this milestone!

And while we are at it, we have a small prize to give away! All you need to do is to leave a comment to this post with your prediction of which country will receive the postcard 2 million and where it came from (example: “From Portugal to Australia”). Only one guess is allowed per person and the first person to answer correctly will receive a little something from us. We’ll reveal the right answer on the day we reach 2 million.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets!

(image by bitzi on flickr)

Does Postcrossing have a special meaning for you? Does it make you smile every time you receive a postcard from the other side of the planet? Did it transform the way you see your mailbox? Now here’s a chance to share all that with everyone.

We are preparing a new section for Postcrossing with testimonials from our members. It will feature what YOU think about Postcrossing and how important it is for you. So, we prepared a webpage where you can tell us your thoughts about the project: no special rules, other than to be honest about what you think and to try to keep it short. And don’t forget to tell us how you want to be identified by (your name and/or location), or if you prefer that your testimonial to remain anonymous – we’ll respect that.

Oh, by the way, we will hand-pick a couple of the best ones to receive a postcard from us, thanking you for the shared love! So don’t be shy and tell us what you think about Postcrossing. We are looking forward to hear from you!

Ever wondered if there is a way to speed up the delivery of the mail sent to you? Well, actually there is!

It’s quite an obvious fact, but is many times overlooked: writing your address in the most complete and correct way for your country helps a good deal on the speed of the delivery. However, each country has it’s own guidelines of how to write the address so, to help with this, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) has created guides for each country describing how to correctly write the address in that country. This not only insures that the mail is always delivered to you but also that it is done as fast as possible when all the mail is sorted and distributed on the postal services.

To help you find the guide for your own country you can go to your edit address section where you’ll find a direct link to it, or go to the UPU website for all the guides.

Oh, and also very important: if your country has a postal code system (most do), make sure you have your postal code in your address and that it is complete. That will also help the postcards arrive faster to you!

During this week we’ve made a couple of changes that you might have noticed already. If not, here’s a quick summary:

Upload sent postcards

Many users are very proud of their postcards walls. They upload every postcard they received, but till recently, they could do very little about the postcards they send: if the user to whom they sent a postcard didn’t have the chance to upload it, then there would be some gaps on the wall.

Now, that’s easy to prevent: the sender is also able to upload the postcard image. This will help keep the walls complete. By the way, if the postcard is still traveling, then the image will be visible only when the postcard gets registered.

Direct swaps

We have revamped the edit profile section which was getting very long and a bit confusing. Now, there’s a separate edit account section where you can manage your Postcrossing account details and another one just for the profile bits. And together with it, we introduced a new profile option: interest in direct swaps. What is it? Simple: if you are interested in doing direct swaps with other users, you can check this box. This way your profile will indicate that you are interested in doing direct swaps. Conversely, users who are not interested will note so on their profile so that they don’t receive enquiry messages. Please mind that direct swaps are not tracked by the Postcrossing website and it is totally up to the users to coordinate those swaps. By the way, the default value is “not interested” so be sure change this if you are interested.

As usual, let us know what you think of the changes and keep submitting your thoughts and ideas on how to improve the project.