Postcrossing Blog

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!

Yay! The eagerly anticipated postcard number 15 million has been registered, and another significant milestone has been reached! Did you notice how quickly this one came? Just earlier this year we were celebrating 10 million postcards, and then… it seems like we just blinked for a second and bam! 15 million! :)

If an image is worth a thousand words, allow us to illustrate the project’s unbelievable growth since its start:

I guess we all really like postcards, eh? :D

Well, enough of that – we know you’re all curious to find out which postcard got the honour, so here it is: postcard DE-1800737, sent by member schwarzer-mann in Germany, and registered at 13:46 (UTC) by limoda in Italy. This is a treat in itself, but just to make it sweeter, both the sender and the receiver will receive a surprise gift from MOO: a pack of 20 postcards and a stickerbook for each of them!

Member kefjo was the big winner of our 15 million contest, since she correctly guessed the exact time that postcard was registered – congratulations! You’ve won a pack of 80 postcards and 2 sticker books from MOO!

Another six lucky postcrossers had the next best guesses! tsaga and Sakura_Students, you’ll get a pack of postcards from Natuurlijkefoto.nl, partalciemre and mandy1804, yours will come from MinorPostcards.fi, and finally grie and erikdeg – your pack is from PostcardWorld.eu's collection. Congrats!

On top of that, as a special treat to all postcrossers for reaching this milestone (and for a limited time), MOO is offering free shipping to all their new customers – enjoy it while it lasts! :)

Once again, thank you all for each and every postcard that you send, and for your continuing support to this project. A big thank you also to our team of volunteers, who help us run the project everyday – and last but not least, to all our lovely sponsors: MOO, PostcardWorld.eu, MinorPostcards.fi and Natuurlijkefoto.nl

Since the new year is about to start, we’d like to grab this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy New Year… with lots of postcards!

Yay! It’s our birthday today! Time does fly when you’re having fun, eh? Every single year, we’re in awe of what this (once) tiny project has become, and how many lives it has touched. We’re immensely grateful for your kind words, enthusiasm and continued support throughout these 7 years! :)

We know you’re dying to know which videos we’ve picked… so here it goes, in no particular order:

Giacatalan, you have some great video skills! :)

LeishaCamden, your words mean a lot to us!

And Ejsirk, what a nice stop-motion video – we loved to see you jump!

Congratulations! The three of you will receive your prizes from MOO and Postcard Locker!

This was a very tough choice… we were seriously impressed by all the nice videos that many of you took the time to make, and had a lot of fun (and even got a little teary-eyed here and there) checking them out. You rock!

Now it’s time to send some postcards, blow some candles and eat a piece of cake! Please do have one too! :)