Postcrossing Blog

Ten years ago today, Paulo was sitting on the balcony of his room in the north of Portugal, laptop balanced on his legs. University exams were over, graduation was weeks away and his internship was going well… and yet, he wasn’t thinking about work or school. He had been toying with his new “postcard crossing project” for a few months now, and time had come to open it to the world.

So he did, changing settings on a command line, and refreshing the page a few lot of times, waiting for his friends and curious strangers to sign up. He didn’t have to wait long though, as word quickly spread from his friends to their friends, and then to the whole world.

Ten years is a long time, and it feels like it should be enough time for us to come to terms with how much Postcrossing has grown and the impact it has had on thousands of lives… and yet, it’s still hard to believe somedays. On Postcrossing’s 10th birthday, we’re thankful to each and every one of you, for believing in this crazy idea, for giving it a try, for coming along for the ride, sending postcards and spreading the word. The project wouldn’t have made this far without you!

Ok, enough with the teary-eyed speeches… it’s time for that party! :) Postcrossing’s birthday map is filling up rather quickly with all your lovely photos and videos! From Argentina to Western Sahara, postcrossers are joining the birthday celebrations, bringing with them cookies, cakes and sandwiches, balloons, mailboxes, songs… and lots and lots of postcards and smiles!

Meanwhile, we’ve been busy putting together 10 prizes for the most voted entries, including postcard sets, scratch maps and MOO postcards!

So don’t delay your participation — you only have until the end of the month to upload, share and favourite the photos and videos on the map. Good luck everyone! And happy birthday Postcrossing!

Woohoo! Postcrossing is turning 10 later this month… can you believe it? By internet standards, we’re practically dinosaurs… and we think that’s a good thing. In a time when websites come and go rather quickly, we’re still sticking around, quietly connecting the world, one postcard at a time. Cheers to that!

Remember when we used to make videos with your lovely photos for these milestones? We loved seeing all your smiley faces, but the videos were getting a bit too long as more and more members joined… so we decided to change things a little.

This time around, we’ve set up a special page with a map, and would like to invite all postcrossers to pin either a picture or a video of yourself celebrating Postcrossing’s 10th birthday. Sing “Happy birthday!” in your own language, hug your postbox, bake a postcard-themed cake, or take a selfie with your wall of postcards… anything’s allowed as long as it is creative, festive and sets the mood for our 10th birthday party. Oh! And it must have something to do with Postcrossing too.

All submissions will show up as markers on the world map, and we hope to have it filled with smiles by the time the anniversary comes around on July 14th. Until then, we encourage you to browse, share and favourite the best ones — there will be prizes for the most favourited photos and videos, of course!

Only one entry is allowed per person, and entries can be submitted until the end of the month — but naturally, the earlier you do it, the more chances you have to collect favourites.

So, let’s go! Put on your most festive shirt, grab your camera and make something that puts a smile on everyone’s face! Let’s show the whole world what a Postcrossing party looks like! We’ll be browsing the entries and cheering you on, with our balloons and party candles in hand! :)

The Little Mail Carriers helped us come up with these photos to get the party started! :)

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Postcrossing,
Happy birthday to you!

Hurray! It’s Postcrossing’s 9th birthday today! That’s quite a lot for an internet project, isn’t it? :)

A few exciting things happened in this past year. Here are some of the highlights:

• New Postcrossing-themed stamps were launched in Finland, Belarus and Guernsey and also a Postcrossing postmark in Czech Republic.
• Postcrossers and Deutsche Post raised €7845 on the “Postcards for a good cause” campaign.
• We reached 20 million postcards, bringing us closer to a postcard received every 5 seconds.
• You organized dozens of meetups all over the world, and flooded us with your lovely stories.
• And many more exciting things happened!

What a great year! :D

And since it’s a special day, we wanted to share something special with you…

Remember back in March, when we asked you to send us postcards for an event – and you responded in a spectacular fashion, sending us over 1000 postcards in a week? Well, the postcards were all delivered at TEDxOporto, and we thought we’d share the talk I gave that day, as it has just been translated into English! Here it goes:

I was so nervous that when I stepped off the stage that I couldn’t remember a single word I had said… but it was truly an honor to be able to spread the message and play “mail carrier” to all your nice postcards! The people loved them and were thrilled to take them home. Some joined the project immediately, others signed up their classes… and a few were already postcrossers and came to say Hi! in the end!

So, our heartfelt thank you to all of you, for making Postcrossing what it is today. Enjoy the day… and send a postcard… or nine! ;-)

Eight years ago, Paulo launched Postcrossing to fix the problem of his empty mailbox. He recruited his friends, which told their friends, and they told their friends… and what do you know – it seems like lots of other people had the same eagerness to fill their mailboxes with postcards from around the world! :)

Today, on Postcrossing’s birthday’s, we would like to thank each and every single postcrosser out there, for your enthusiasm and continued support throughout these 8 years! This postcard revolution wouldn’t be possible without you.

Marichie, atb and UnaHora in Spain also sent us this fantastic video and Agger and auszra1 in Lithuania wrote a Postcrossing song!

We couldn’t pick a single best entry… or even three… so a lot of people are going to receive a little something from Postcrossing’s HQ! Turtles, heymma, Frogglin, kelpie, nomadic_gypsy, kugusch & linabella and Marichie, atb & UnaHora – keep an eye on your mailboxes!

Happy Postcrossing! Have a piece of your favourite cake today! :)

As you might have noticed, Postcrossing’s eight birthday is coming up soon… which means, it’s time for our annual birthday party… and a little contest! :)

Eight candles by Tim Ellis on Flickr.

This year, we thought we’d hand over the reins to YOU!

Your mission, if you wish to accept it, is to make something that celebrates Postcrossing. Bake a Postcrossing cake, knit a scarf in the project’s colours, skywrite the website’s name in the sky… surprise us! Big or small, anything goes – the limit is your imagination! :)

You have until Saturday 13th 11:59pm (GMT) to send us a photo of your masterpiece to 8birthday@postcrossing.com. We’ll publish the results in a week – and of course, there will be surprise gifts to the best ones!

As an example, have a look at the delicious cookies our friend Cecília baked some time ago:

Neat, right? :) So now it’s your turn… rally up your friends, roll up your sleeves and make something! We cannot wait to see what you come up with!