Christmas time means Christmas cards - but mobile MMS and SMS is simply better

I had a cup of tea with my parents last night as they wrote out their Christmas cards. This is something that neither I nor anyone else my age does anymore. So it’s funny that this story should land in my inbox today - Sharpcards, one of the world’s largest provider of mobile ecards, has claimed that even though we’re in the early days of the festive season the number of mobile ecards sent is up by 33%.

What’s this now?

While I may not send Christmas cards to my friends and relatives on Christmas, I do keep in contact. And I do this through email and SMS. And there are a fair number of pro’s for the mobile eCard:

Convenience - the main reason for sending someone a card at Christmas is to let them know you’re thinking of them. With SMS and MMS you can let a lot of people know you’re thinking about them at the same time!
Green - Wasteonline.org.uk claims that up to 1,000,000,000 Christmas cards will be sent in the UK alone this year. And most of these will end up in the bin. Mobile cards cuts down on that kind of waste.
Fancy - it doesn’t have to be a plain text SMS. The people who inspired this story, Sharpcards, send animations, videos and picture greetings via MMS. And while that’s not something you might want to use everyday, it’s perfect for the occasional greeting card.

But lets look at what Christmas cards have to offer:

The personal touch - it’s nice to receive a hand written card! It takes more effort to actually go through the process of sending a card, and a lot of people appreciate that.
Support the card making industry - ok, so this is a joke reason. We’ve all been horribly ripped off by the Hallmarks of the world for many years now. To be honest, I can’t think of any more pro’s for Christmas cards.

Sharpcards CEO, Will Walsh said: “We’ve seen great year-on-year growth of people sending mobile ecards over the festive season and as you would expect this is one of our busiest times with Christmas and New Year. More and more people are discovering the benefits of mobile ecards, especially around busy postal periods, where the service cannot always necessarily be depended on to deliver on time. With major carrier partners around the world, we can make sure that whoever you want to reach out to, that they get an instant, meaningful and fun Christmas greeting from you, no matter where they are. Today, you’re more than likely to have someone’s mobile number rather than their address, after all we’re in the habit now of collecting contact numbers to store in our mobile address books, rather than addresses. So it makes sense that people are sending more and more mobile ecards cards.”

What we think?

Despite my claims that I like to contact people over Christmas, I’ll be sticking mostly with SMS and email. That probably just means that I’m more of a curmudgeon than usual, but it’s enough for me to just reach out and make contact at Christmas - and that’s all I want in return. Just a simple message saying “Merry Christmas”. Well, except for a friend of mine and I who have a tradition of ringing each other on Christmas day in order to deliver carefully planned-out insults… but that’s another tradition altogether.