Feeling lonely, redux

Last month, my colleague wrote a blog post on PostCrossing and was not feeling the love about its services. It's basically an upgrade of the pen pal concept: you sign up for the free service, are randomly assigned a name and address of another user anywhere in the world so that you can zip off a postcard to that person. The service tracks the postcards you send (similar to Facebook on a personal wall) and ensures that you receive a postcard in return for every one that you mail.

So I tried it out, and the verdict is in: PostCrossing actually rocks. Maybe you need to be of a certain age to appreciate this site and service -- when I was young, everyone wanted a pen pal who lived overseas. And I have to say, after multiple trips abroad, this is still the case in countries such as Germany and Australia, where local residents randomly met in bars ask if they can keep in touch. That's why PostCrossing has hundreds of thousands of users, and now I'm one of them. So far, I've received thank you emails through the site from my postcard recipients in Finland and Germany, and I've received my first postcard from a woman in Taiwan.

Yes, it's true that it's not an immediate gratification kind of a thing...the postcard from Taiwan took 17 days from the time my name/address was generated by PostCrossing until it was received. And the postcards I've mailed to China and Thailand have yet to arrive, although they were sent three weeks ago. But if you're patient, it's kind of a cool activity for a rainy afternoon. And we have a lot of those in the Seattle area.

-posted by Rachel