You've got mail ... and it's a postcard

Paulo Magalhaes chats about Postcrossing.com operations with Ana Campos, the site's community manager. Provided To China Daily

Paulo Magalhaes loves to open his mailbox and find a brightly colored image of Rome's Colosseum. Or Africa's Victoria Falls. Or Peking's duck.

In short, he loves postcards, and the excitement of getting a scribbled note from someone far away.

"I often send postcards to family and friends," he says, "but you can imagine that after a while, you never receive as much as you send, and you realize that not everyone is into it. And that's totally fine."

Seeking other like-minded souls, however, Magalhaes started looking in a somewhat unlikely place: online. Many would say the Internet is a haven for folks who have written off "snail mail", but the Portuguese computer-systems engineer's hunch paid off.

Today his hobby has evolved into the website Postcrossing.com, a social network that has grown to 575,217 registered users in 214 countries and regions since he launched it 10 years ago. On Aug 5, the number of postcards exchanged by members topped 31 million. Running the site has almost turned into a full-time job.

Magalhaes, 34, recently chatted with China Daily about the surprising growth of his "project", the years he spent in China, how Chinese people have embraced postcrossing, and why he thinks it's a global hit.

First of all, how does postcrossing work? And what does it cost?

You request an address from the website; mail the postcard to the address; wait to receive a postcard from another random member; register the received postcard in the system. It doesn't cost anything except the price of a postcard and a stamp.

Who's doing it?

Russia has the most members, while Germany is the most active by the number of postcards sent. Finland has the highest number of 'postcrossers' per capita. Something binds them all together, be it the act of receiving mail itself, or be it the postcard or the stamp. Many love the message and making a connection with someone random from across the world.

After 10 years, what has surprised you most about the response to your idea?

When I launched Postcrossing.com, I did expect to be able to connect with a few others who shared the same interest in sending and receiving traditional mail, specially, postcards. But that there were so many, was a big surprise! And that the concept of postcrossing was so welcome around the world surpassed my best hopes.

You lived for a time in Shanghai - what brought you to China?

I had just finished my studies and I wanted to learn about other countries and cultures. China is quite an interesting place and I was lucky enough to get a job offer in Shanghai, which allowed me to live there from 2007 to 2009, and learn a little about the country and its people. I still miss that time and I hope to visit again soon.

Going out of the house was always a small adventure. It didn't get boring, that's for sure. If I had to pick (one memory) it was the reckless driving, specially by taxi drivers. I'm not sure how it is in Beijing, but the experience for a European such as myself in Shanghai was initially quite terrifying. But equally impressive was how, over time, it just became the new normal for me.

Chinese people sometimes struggle to fit in with Western social media, due to both language and social barriers. Have Chinese members found it easy to embrace postcrossing?

Language is certainly a hurdle in postcrossing for many people - not only Chinese. For postcrossing to work on a global scale, a common communication language is needed so that everyone can understand each other. As cool as it may be to receive a postcard written in Chinese, the concept doesn't work if one doesn't understand it. Likewise, if you speak only Chinese, receiving a card written in Swedish takes part of the fun away. So a common language is required, and in postcrossing that's English since it's widely spoken.

Many people in China have limited exposure to English and that makes it (extra) hard to learn and practice it. That said, we know of many postcrossing members (including Chinese), who actually improved their English skills through their use of postcrossing.

One of the benefits cited on the postcrossing home page is the opportunity to learn languages. Isn't that asking a lot of a postcard?

I have learned the hard way that learning a language from a book can be quite hard and tedious. Often, by making it fun and learning it little by little is what makes language evolve - I think a postcard can do that pretty well. I would not recommend anyone learning a language through postcards, but it certainly helps and makes it more fun in the process.

Are you surprised by the number of members who are teenagers and young professionals?

I like to think of postcrossing as a family-friendly hobby. It pleases any age or background. The reasons can vary - perhaps children find it fun to receive a message in a postcard from across the world, while a grandmother may find it interesting to learn to travel the world this way if she is unable to travel anymore. In between you have teenagers who want to connect with other people, and young adults who perhaps are just looking for something to distract them from their daily grind. A surprise postcard in the mailbox with a little window to someone's life can make anyone's day.

Does postcrossing make money - or at least cover the cost of maintaining such a big website?

We don't sell any products and the postcrossing service remains free as it always was. We support the project through advertisements on the website which are often to postcard related services such as online postcard shops.

Are you still actively sending postcards through the site yourself?

I'm not as active as I wish to be these days - keeping up with sending and receiving postcards to all the friends I have made through postcrossing is time-consuming. Moreover, keeping postcrossing running has become a full-time job at the scale it is today, so less time for actually participating in it. I still send and receive postcards and it's still fun to open the mailbox.

michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn