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This
page considers online greeting cards.
It covers -
It
supplements discussion of messaging
and security elsewhere on
this site. It is complemented by a note on postal
systems.
introduction
Online greeting cards (sometimes referred to as e-greetings,
e-postcards or e-cards) have attracted attention as an online
embodiment of print formats such as -
- Christmas
cards and cards for other religious/secular festivals
such as Easter, Valentine's Day, Father's Day and Mother's
Day
- Get
Well cards
- Engagement
and Wedding cards
- Birthday
Cards
- Joke
cards
- place-specific
postcards
They
have also attracted criticism as spam, as a mechanism for
the delivery of malware (viruses, spyware) and as the basis
for businesses that expired with the collapse of the dot-com
bubble.
e-Greetings have essentially taken two forms.
The first involves users accessing a card vendor's website,
selecting one of several images (static or animated), adding
a short text and then supplying the recipient's email address.
The card is then either electronically mailed by the vendor
to that address or the recipient receives an email
from the vendor indicating that a card has been addressed,
with the recipient clicking on a link in that email (or
entering an URL in a browser)
to access the card.
The second form involves a user constructing an image on
a personal computer (rather than on a vendor's web site)
using graphics software. That software is typically proprietary
in nature: it may be for general use or specific to card
creation, eg offering a number of templates into which the
user loads images and text. The user then distributes the
card as an attachment to an email message or as a graphic
inserted within an email. The format offers greater customisation
than that available on an egreetings site.
precursors
Emergence of the egreetings card was an extension of the
traditional postcard and greeting card, media that can be
traced to the beginning of printing (if not before) but
that first became a mass phenomenon after the 1860s with
advances in lithography, paper production and national postal
systems.
Handmade paper greeting cards in Europe have been traced
to the early 1400s, with for example crude woodcuts to celebrate
religious festivals and more elaborate cards (some featuring
purple and gold ink) on St Valentine's day or personal name
days. The inadequacy of distribution mechanisms and the
cost of paper meant that cards were essentially an elite
pursuit. They did not really take off until the emergence
of the 'penny post' (eg 1840 in the UK), sustained falls
in the price of paper and card, and acceptance of technologies
such as lithography.
Adoption was also driven by emulation on a national and
international basis, particularly with removal of restrictions
that had sought to protect national postal services (eg
the Private Mailing Card Act in the US during 1898 ended
government restrictions on message cards).
Landmarks for the emergence of published cards in different
genres are contested. European historians for example often
attribute the first published Christmas card to artist John
Horsley, commissioned in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole of what
became the Victoria & Albert Museum. US writers promote
Esther Howland as the progenitor of the contemporary valentines
card, noting sale of her first handmade valentine in 1849.
Boston printer Louis Prang has gained attention for 'deluxe
editions' of Christmas cards as part of the Victorian invention
of Christmas (trees, Santa Claus etc). Sales of Christmas,
birthday and other 'event' cards were dwarfed by the explosive
growth of postcards across all classes in Western economies.
Those sales provide a perspective on contemporary electronic
mailing. It is estimated for example that some 600 million
postcards, many in colour, were produced in France in 1906.
Some 800 million were mailed in the UK in 1909. The US Post
Office reported that in 1907 some 678 million cards were
mailed, with many of those cards being printed overseas
in another illustration that globalisation predates the
internet and WTO. The Imperial German Post had transported
over 122 million postcards in 1879.
industry
Growth slowed after the 1920s, reflecting reductions in
the cost of moving people and in uptake of telecommunications
by households in many countries.
The card industry sought to achieve economies of scale (with
for example significant concentration in the US and Germany)
and to sustain growth through the invention of events such
as Fathers Day and Mothers Day. Some leading businesses
expanded into comic, mail order catalogue and magazine production,
into directory printing,
into board game manufacture, into gift shop and photo studio
operation and even into broadcasting (eg Hallmark in the
US).
The industry has a large number of players but global production
is dominated by a handful of giants. In the US for example
Hallmark and American Greetings are claimed to have 45%
and 40% respectively of the domestic greeting card market.
The US Greeting Card Association (GCA) claims
that US consumers currently purchase around seven billion
greeting cards per year (with US$7.5 billion in retail sales).The
average US household supposedly buys 30 individual cards
in a year, with the average recipient getting over 20 cards
per year, of which around a third are birthday cards.
The GCA's UK counterpart claims £1.2 billion retail
sales per year, with just under 2.5 billion cards and an
average of 44 greeting cards bought per person. As of 2003
the Canadian market was reported to have annual retail sales
of around C$750 million. Germans supposedly sent 617 million
cards
Advent of the web saw several innovators launch online card
services, quickly emulated by a wide range of small competitors
seeking to fill particular niches or cover the whole market.
Major operators gained media attention - much of it distinctly
uncritical, evident in claims that e-cards would quickly
supersede print formats and "vaporize the paper dinosaurs"
- and high traffic figures.
Bellwether site Blue Mountain for example served some 17
million electronic valentines day cards in 2000. An animated
card featuring a Thanksgiving turkey singing 'I Will Survive'
was supposedly sent to over 30 million people.
As the dot-com bubble gathered pace some operators were
accordingly acquired for large sums. Excite@Home paid US$780
million for Blue Mountain in 1999, selling it two years
later to print giant American Greetings for a mere US$35
million.
The early online card industry was built on expectations
that consumers would have free access to cards, with site
operators making money by exposing those users to advertisements
during card selection or by commoditising personal information
(eg hitting the sender and/or the recipient with promotional
messages).
Evolution of the industry was marked by the highly-publicised
collapse of some servers, unsurprising given loads on those
machines, and the demise of some operators who found that
they were unable to gain sufficient revenue in a volatile
market.
Many of the surviving operators accordingly shifted to some
form of subscription service, with consumers paying for
the right to send a specific or unlimited number of electronic
cards each year. Collapse of the bubble also saw greater
emphasis on animated novelties as consumers experienced
(and often quickly wearied of) static images and on strategic
alliances with major online portals.
The December 2000 Pew Internet Project's
report
on The holidays online: Emails and e-greetings
outpace e-commerce suggested that
53% of the US online population (over 51 million
people) sent email during December to relatives and friends
to discuss the holidays or make plans. 32% of users sent
e-greeting cards. Hispanics
were more likely than other groups to have sent e-greeting
cards (45% did so) and a gender gap
in sending online greeting cards saw 38% of women send cards
versus 27% of men.
issues
Critics have identified a number of concerns regarding online
greeting cards -
- consumer
fatigue
- infections
- filtering
- bad
manners
e-Greeting enthusiasts have claimed that online cards are
more immediate or merely cheaper than those in paper formats.
Others have claimed that cards off sites or a personal computer
are more intimate than mass produced publications.
That has provoked a rejoinder from traditional publishers
that paper cards offer a richer sensation - visual and tactile
- and may be perceived by recipients as more 'sincere' (or
merely more respectful) than something despatched with a
few keystrokes.
They have also commented that most cards off sites are indeed
mass produced and that, since many people lack the requisite
design skills and tools, many cards created on personal
cards look decidedly derivative.
The answer probably lies in the eyes (or hands) of the beholder.
Boom era anxieties about anthrax and letter bombs (and hype
about the failures of particular postal services) led some
observers to promote e-cards as safer traditional paper
cards. Ironically, many consumers conceptualise e-greetings
as vectors for infection, rather than as a speedy risk-free
alternative to the postage stamp & cardboard variety.
One reason is that some site operators have scraped contact
details for provision to third parties. Another reason is
that some sites have failed to achieve best practice, with
security weaknesses for example allowing spammers to capture
databases of e-card senders and recipients. Security analysts
have recurrently noted that cards can infect a recipient's
personal computer or other device and that sites may install
trojans.
The willingness of consumers to open what is claimed to
be a greeting, whether from an associate or from someone
unknown, has led a range of offenders to exploit viruses
that appropriate the address book on a personal computer
and send fake e-cards that appear to be authorised by the
owner of that machine.
Other consumers have discovered that opening a card - or
what is claimed to be a card - or visiting an e-greetings
site results in illicit installation of pop-ups for an adult
content or gambling site.
As a result some organisations (including Caslon Analytics)
forbid staff from opening or sending e-cards. Some network
operators comprehensively block receipt of messages from
e-greetings services and seek to prevent circulation of
animated attachments.
That filtering has raised the ire of particular e-greeting
services but is consistent with Australian and overseas
law. In essence, a private network on the periphery of the
net is not obligated to transfer any/all messages from a
sender to a recipient within that network. A consequence
has been that particular demographics have turned away from
e-greetings, as there is little point sending a message
that is likely to disappear into a filter before it reaches
the intended reader.
A January 2004 Nielsen//NetRatings report, consistent with
figures released by individual e-greetings site operators
(and those for paper cards), claimed that 61.5% of senders
were female. Age cohorts for visitors were as follows -
age
up to 11
12 to 17
18 to 24
25 to 34
35 to 49
55 to 64
65 plus |
%
1.9
7.21
5.25
16.36
31.30
16.68
10.52 |
Income
cohorts for US visitors were claimed as follows -
US$
to 24,999
25,000 to 49,999
50,000 to 74,999
75,000 to 99,999
100,000 to 149,999
150,000 plus
No response |
%
8.84
28.3
26.87
15.84
11.42
6.40
2.32 |
Ivor
Tossell of the Toronto Globe & Mail commented
in 2007 that
Valentine's
Day is only the first of 365 great days not to send an
e-card.
You know the kind, where you get what appears to be an
e-mail from a friend, but turns out to be from a robot
at a greeting-card company instead.
Inside the e-mail there's some legalese and an unintelligible
link, and when you click it, you get taken to a Web page
where a dancing rodent pops up with an inscription like,
"Every time I think of you, I hug you in my heart".
Maybe there are people out there who really do feel hugged
in the heart when they find this in their inbox. Personally,
I feel some constriction of the throat. I was examining
the free e-cards Hallmark has on its site, and one page
bears the slogan "Hallmark: When you care enough
to send the best".
That's a bit disingenuous. When you're preparing an e-card,
you already know you're not in "sending the best"
territory. You've landed in the administrative district
of "tossing one off", which is just across an
unguarded border from the People's Republic of Jerk.
There are alternatives to sending an e-card, but none
so enticingly lazy.
Writing an e-mail takes some thoughtful word-crafting.
Picking up the phone or dropping an instant messenger
note means you're willing to engage in the resulting conversation.
Having a staff member write form letters on your behalf
and sign them with an auto-pen involves logistics and
costs that might impress, if not touch, the person on
the receiving end. Sending a paper greeting card involves
shopping and inscribing and stamping and mailing; it might
not be poetic, but in the hierarchy of correspondence,
sweat equity counts for something.
With an e-card, however, you can dispense with birthdays,
anniversaries, graduations, religious holidays, bereavements
- basically any event that shouldn't be commemorated by
a cartoon character and a grating music loop - with a
two-minute visit to a website.
It represents the minimum of effort or consideration required
to acknowledge an occasion. You don't need to raise your
eyebrows or modulate your voice or choose your words.
You just twiddle your mouse.
Problem is, everyone knows it. There might have been a
time, six or seven years ago, when an e-card from a site
like Blue Mountain held a certain novelty value. But now,
it's old hat, and everybody knows how little effort is
required.
The real message in an e-card is: "I remembered you
on Valentine's Day, and this is precisely as much as I
was prepared to do about it."
Hallmark, of course, knows this. That's why, when you
send a free Valentine's e-card, they encourage you to
drop an extra $84.95 on a dozen roses to go with it. It's
not just a clever cross-promotion: It's an attempt to
capitalize on the guilt of people who know exactly how
cheap that e-card is going to look, sitting in their special
somebody's inbox.
It's one thing to greet your friends with a card that's
one step above an insult in cartoon form. But if you start
buying swag to soften the blow, it's time to reconsider
your approach. It makes you look thoughtless, and the
checkout-counter reminder to buy flowers is no substitute
for real emotion.
studies
Scholarly literature on e-greetings is distinctly thin and
there have been no major studies of the e-cards industry.
The 1998 paper
by Linda Mooney & Sarah Brabant on Off the Rack:
Store Bought Emotions and the Presentation of Self will
be of interest to fans of Erving Goffman, as will be Jane
Hobson's 2002 dissertation
Texted love: a social-semiotic examination of greeting
cards and Barry Shank's outstanding A Token of
My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture
(New York: Columbia Uni Press 2005).
In contrast to studies of e-greetings there is an extensive,
albeit often distinctly parochial, literature on printed
postcards as a communications mechanism, industry, cultural
phenomenon, artistic genre and subject of regulation (eg
censorship).
Works of particular significance include Frank Staff's The
Picture Postcard & Its Origins (London: Lutterworth
Press 1966), Richard Carline's Pictures in the Post:
the Story of the Picture Postcard (London: Gordon Fraser
1971)Frederick Alderson's The Comic Postcard in English
Life (Rutland: Tuttle 1970), Roger Grant's Railroad
Postcards in the Age of Steam (Iowa City: Uni of Iowa
Press 1994), George & Dorothy Miller's Picture Postcards
in the United States 1893-1918 (New York: Potter 1976).
Other pointers are here.
landmarks
1982 Wesray buys Gibson Greetings for US$80.5m
1994 Hallmark acquires RHI Entertainment (tv programming
and distribution), later renamed Hallmark Entertainment
1995 American Greetings acquires John Sands in Australia
and New Zealand
1995 American Greetings launches site with America Online,
Netscape and Microsoft
1996 Hallmark launches site
1999 Excite@Home pays US$780m for Blue Mountain
1999 American Greetings buys Gibson Greetings (inc 20% of
Egreetings Network) for US$163m
1999 Hallmark.com relaunched as an B2C site offering gifts,
e-cards and gourmet food products
2001 Blue Mountain acquired by American Greetings for US$35m
2001 American Greetings buys remaining 80% of Egreetings
Network for US$28.6m, writes down US$33m on initial 20%
2007 CNET
sells photosharing site WebShots to American Greetings for
US$45m
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