Postcrossing



I had a penpal in school. She was from Australia and it was fun connecting with someone on the other side of the world. I remember getting some drawings even. There was no internet back then. Not as we know it. Thing is, it got kind of boring after a while. Letters were sparse and frankly the australian girl wasn't that interesting. Still, getting mail in the letterbox remained exciting. It come packaged in an envelope but even if it doesn't, you still have to open this box to get it and sometimes there's a postcard just laying thee waiting. Maybe it's just nostalgia. I still write tons of postcards to people I know but I send a lot more than I receive.

So, what if you could receive a postcard for each that you send? That's exactly what Portuguese computer science engineer / nomad Paulo Magalhães set out to provide back in 2005. He created a platform where a community of postcard lovers could unite and called it Postcrossing. It has since been growing steadily and now counts more than 600.000 users having facilitated the exchange of more than 37 million postcards!
Members now organize Postcrossing meet ups all over the world and a Postcrossing stamp has been created in 2011 by the Dutch postal services (PostNL). It works in a simple way. After registering with the website you request an address from the website to send a postcard to. In it you will write a code provided by Postcrossing (just like blablacar) and then mail it. The member you sent it to will then register this postcard in the website upon receiving it. You become then eligible to receive a postcard - your address will be shared with another member. And repeat. 

What are you waiting for?

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