The Network of Postcards
Postcard is a 3.5” x 5”rectangular piece of thin cardboard with drawing or picture on one side and writing on the other. It dates back to England in 1840 as a traditional mean to exchange message and connect people. Postcards are very popular due to the variety of subjects that could be printed on it, the affordable cost to send, the number of words needed to be written, and the amount of happiness when one receives it in the mail. As a fellow deltiophile myself, a term for postcard collector, it is hard not to know the website Postcrossing. (http://www.postcrossing.com/) It is a social network project that utilizes networking technology in the 21st century to preserve the old-fashion handwritten mailing system and to link the world together with one common interest.
As a registered member, you will be given a random address of another Postcrosser and a unique ID that identifies each postcard. When you receive the postcard, you put the ID into the system for record keeping. The more postcards you send, the more you will be able to receive. Furthermore, the website will tell you the distance to your destination and a little google map picture that illustrates all the nodes and edges you have created.
The idea of “distance” is very important in the network of Postcrossing. The system that generates addresses for the users is the one that creates the network behind this website. Even though the exchange is said to be completely random, I think the system is optimized to generate addresses that are far away from each other or from different countries. The creator of the system knows that people enjoy sending or receiving postcards from unfamiliar places that they have never been to, because those are postcards that you cannot physically buy yourself. Therefore, if you look at the whole network on a bigger scale, for example, take each country as a node. The connections between countries that are further away are stronger than the countries next door. This is usually not typical for social networks in life because you tend to stick with people of your own circle, culture, country, or color. People in the same school, grade, or even major have a stronger connection because they are physically closer to each other. However, on Postcrossing, it proves the opposite because the users desire the particular different network that they don’t experience regularly. They want that distant connection. The fact that the website provides a statistic data of “Distance Sent” and “Distance Received” for each user proves that users like to see how far their words have travelled and how far their connections are. They even have ranking of the users by “Distance,” calculated by the total of kilometers travelled by all the postcards you sent. Therefore, you can see how much distance meant to the users and the designers. The further the connections are, the better. I was not a very consistent user to show a good graph, but I have a few connections to illustrate my point. Below is little network graph (google map) that demonstrates my personal connection with the world. They are all of different countries.
Postcrossers are not only connected by exchanging postcards on a global scale, but they are also trying to create smaller and tighter networks by using forums. (http://forum.postcrossing.com/) Within the global network, there are smaller communities that are categorized by geographical location or subjects of interests. “Postcrossing Communities” are forums divided into countries where you can talk in your own language and share information or cost about buying postcards locally. For example, in the Japan forum, you would see people asking about the condition after Japan Northeastern Earthquake and sending them heart-warming cards. “Fan Clubs” are forums where people share their specific collections such as Hello Kitty, Disney, animals, or food. “Gatherings, Meet-ups, and Conventions” are forums where people would decide a time to meet fellow Postcrossers, hang out, and then write postcards together, in order for Postcrossers to create local and personal networks. Furthermore, there are other forums that you can find pen-pals or traders to further enhance the strength of your connections with other users.
In Postcrossing, the “distance” of each connection is very important in the bigger scale of the project, but the “strength” of the connection is decided by each user on his or her own will using the forums. It is a great website where people could celebrate their collectable hobbies on a global scale, utilize networking websites to further enlarge your collections, and create a tight social circle however you want.