Postcrossing Blog

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.

Need an idea for a Valentine’s day present to the love of your life? Does he or she like postcards too?

We have just stumbled upon the perfect little gift: the postcup!
Postcups are lovely mugs that have a heart or message engraved on one side. On the other side you can customize them with your own message – as if they were a postcard :)

Isn’t that sweet? They’re handmade by Etsy user baileydoesntbark, and you can get them in her shop.

Over the past weeks we have received a lot of feedback from the Postcrossing members for what kind of statistics they would like to see. While we can’t possible implement everything that was requested (or the system would be too complex to both use and make) we collected what were the most requested items and started working on it.

Today I’m happy to announce that we have the new user statistics ready for you to give it a try! Each account has its own personal statistics that reflect its account data.

You can access your own stats using the left menu on 'My stats’. Please keep in mind this is work in progress so if you find any problems, be sure to tell us so we can fix it as soon as possible.

As usual, please let us know what you think!