Postcrossing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Postcrossing is a project, inspired by bookcrossing, designed to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world. Participants who send a postcard should receive at least one back, from a postcrosser in another country. Because each postcard received is registered with the website, users are able to generate global-scale maps of destinations which they have sent cards to and received cards from, and review the journey times of mailed items.
As of December 2006, there were 17,755 members from 133 countries. More than 324,990 postcards have been received because of this project and about 30,701 are currently travelling. Maps generated of the site's general activity reveal higher concentrations of users in Europe and North America than in other areas, with Finland being the only country to have broken the 60,000 postcards sent barrier.[1][2]
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[edit] Statistics
Postcrossing provides a number of statistics as well as various mapping options. According to site statistics [3], more than four times more females are registered than males.
[edit] Distribution of Members (updated monthly)
| Country | Number of members (29 November 2006) | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Finland | 5,365  969 |
| 2. | United States | 2,567  49 |
| 3. | Germany | 1,523 12 |
| 4. | Netherlands | 959 22 |
| 5. | Brazil | 832 67 |
| 6. | Portugal | 726 16 |
| 7. | United Kingdom | 498 11 |
| 8. | France | 414 66 |
| 9. | New Zealand | 420 32 |
| 10. | Canada | 401 12 |
| 11. | Singapore | 361 37 |
| 12. | Russia | 324 10 |
| 13. | Australia | 285 9 |
| 14. | Japan | 254 28 |
| 15. | Spain | 251 9 |
| 16. | Hungary | 176 5 |
[edit] Tags
Tagging is an alternative way of obtaining specific postcards that you desire from other members on the forum. There are many different tags which all have a specialised theme eg. Sheep Tag. One member will tag the forum member that has posted above them, ask for their address and sent them a postcard that is related to the tag theme. Then someone will post in the thread and 'tag' them, therefore sending that person a postcard.
Tags are used by many members who collect specific types of postcards, as they can participate in whichever tags they want.
[edit] Forum
The website has an official forum which allows members to discuss many aspects of the project with other members, as well as participate in games, tags and postcard swaps. There is also an off topic section for threads not related to Postcrossing.
[edit] Bingo
Bingo is a popular game which is played on the forum. The aim of the game is to receive postcards from as many different places as possible, in order to score bingo. Bingos are location specific. For example, when playing a New Zealand bingo, there are 16 listed regions in New Zealand and once a user has received postcards from all 16 regions, they have achieved bingo. The same can be done for sending postcards.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.postcrossing.com/usersMap
- ^ http://www.postcrossing.com/stats
- ^ http://www.postcrossing.com/stats
