When You Care Enough to Send ... An E-Card

This podcast uses the perspectives of Wanda Wen, owner of Soolip, a paper card and invitation store in Los Angeles, Gregg Spiridellis, CEO of JibJab and Ron Miller, owner of greeting card company Village Lighthouse to explore the positives and negatives of the increased usage of E-Cards.

For more on this story visit:
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/19/131441437/when-you-care-enough-to-send-an-e-card

I don't send E-Cards for holidays, birthdays or any other occassion, I write a nice message in a person's Facebook inbox, on their wall or send a heartfelt text message. Bottom line --- I use technology to express my holiday greetings. If I wish to give a person a card, usually a family member or close friend, I would send them one. I spend about $20 a year on cards. I know, it's pretty cheap and what I write inside of them is much more personal than the generic greeting in a card. Sending E-Cards (or some other form of digital messaging) would not stop me from sending traditional cards or vise-versa.

"It goes hand in hand. If you have a really important loved one that you really care about, you're not gonna buy them an e-card. You're gonna go into a store and buy them a card and you're gonna write that personal sentiment in addition to the way that they're doing it on Facebook," says Miller. Basically, I agree.

And For Wen's comment, "It's a little bit sad. It's sad that our existence, our community is losing its human touch, humanness", not so much. She's over-thinking it, being overly sensitive to the rise of the usage of technology. We aren't losing our human touch, we're just touching in different ways, through computers and cellular devices opposed to phone calls and sending cards by way of the US Postal system. We communicate with each other more because our means of communication is easier.  A lot of people who never sent Christmas cards in their life have done so in the past couple of years or will probably send greetings to people this year because it is easier and a lot more efficient. I can say "Happy Holidays" to hundreds of people with the click of one button. No postage stamps or finding street addresses involved.