Postagram Transforms Any Instagram Into A Postcard And Delivers It For $0.99 | Hacker News Reader

Postagram Transforms Any Instagram Into A Postcard And Delivers It For $0.99

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67 pointsthankuz31 comments

This seems like a really good idea, except that for me, it destroys two of the main reasons I send post cards when I travel:

* The physical mail is moving from where I am travelling to where the recipient is back home. It has to travel, just like I am.

* The best post cards are cramped with text.

* postmarks: (for me at least) you see where it was mailed from and when, additional ties to the time and place when it was written. A postmark from wherever the postagram warehouse is located isn't as interesting as the Paris mail exchange or the airmail stamp from Dehli.

seems to me like they've missed what gives value to postcards to me: their timeliness & physical history. No one really looks at the picture anyway, that's incidental, it's the message that's important.

I always put a _lot_ more than 140 characters on the back of a postcard. I put more than 140 charters just into the "DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE" space on the postcard. Postcards aren't about the picture, they're about sending a message from a specific time and place, forward to a person in a different place.

So, this is a good idea, but won't replace actual postcards for me. I could see using it for a number of other things, but I don't think this is in any way "at least 1,000 times better" than a long, thoughtful note crammed onto the back of some cheap cardstock you bought for a quarter at the beach. EDIT: spelling.

a_m_kelly - i'm the founder of Sincerely (creator of postagram)

I totally hear where you are coming from. We don't intend to replace old-school postcards.

Instead, we think of postcards simply as a delivery mechanism for photos. We are arbitraging the US postal service's subsidized delivery rates to get a photo printed and delivered from an iphone. If we make it incredibly easy to print and deliver a photo, we think it will create new photo sharing behaviors. Part of it will be the canonical "here is a photo i took while traveling" use case you mentioned. But I'm more interested in the "Brad - thanks for inviting us on the ski trip" thank you card or simply sending a photo of my niece to my parents & relatives.

Sincerely, what I think you should do is to partner with Mailboxes etc. (or similar) (or even with FedEx) and have the postcards printed in the appropriate local zipcode.

Postcards of the Grand Canyon need to come from the Grand Canyon.

Postcards of the Eiffel Tower need to come from Paris.

This actually makes your play even easier since you don't have to buy as many printers.

This is attractive for your parters since you are selling their services for them, and since you are increasing utilization of their equipment.

Ya know, I am kicking myself for telling you this when you haven't hired me, but the best part of my suggestion is that it makes YOUR trips to the Eiffel Tower, to the Grand Canyon, to Maui, to Tokyo, to Niagara Falls completely tax deductible as you work to sign up local vendors who will do the printing and shipping and marketing at the local attraction for you.

And you probably can find actual vendors in those locations that can, at the location from their streetcart or small shop take the photo emailed to you (perhaps via QR code), print it out locally at their stand, and then they hand it back to the customer along with the proper stamp, and the customer can write anything they want on it, and drop it in the mail.

Hey, um, I have some free time this summer, happy to make those trips with you....

Are there any plans to expand your service to europe in the near future?

I can't download the app in the german store right now.

I have to say, this is simply brilliant!

Instagram's filters are also a weird, annoying, inauthentic, dare I say pretentious concept. It's like it wants to infuse vintage nostalgia into the present.

I like Postagram's concept on its own premise - and I think it'll work great for them.

It's about discovering a market and a userbase, and these people have done that. I can't do anything but with them the best.

It already uses Instagram, so it's not like it's to blame for the aforementioned downsides. They are latching onto the mentality and turning a profit from it. You don't even have to like Instagram to do that.

I don't like Instagram, but I wish I'd come up with this idea. I don't have to like Justin Bieber's music to sell ear plugs near his concert.

So, this is a good idea, but won't replace actual postcards for me

Well I have been doing this with the Postino iOS app for a couple of years now and it has replaced postcards for me (though obviously I don't expect it to do so for everyone).

The two killer features for Postino are (a) the convenience, for example you don't have to obtain stamps or find a postbox and (b) KIDS. Your parents are probably a lot more likely to want a picture of their grandkid in front of the Eiffel tower, rather than just the Eiffel tower itself.

I agree about the message being equally important though, the Postino app allows for a non-trivial amount of text and a hand-drawn "signature".

I'm really interested in the logistics for a service like this. In fact, taking any kind of digital content and massively putting it offline is fascinating to me.

Is there a 3rd party service you use to send data via an API and you get back all the postcards? Do you do it yourself with an expensive printer?

I've had lots of ideas in the past similar to this, I never had the resources to follow through. Interested!

I'm one of the co-founders of Newspaper Club (http://www.newspaperclub.com/), so I've got a little bit of experience in this area.

Honestly, there's nothing special to it. Pushing atoms around is hard work, but there's thousands of years of technology designed for it.

It's boring legwork calling and visiting logistics companies, fulfilment houses, and printers, trying to find the right combination of expertise, location, attitude, and so on.

But it's also what most traditional manufacturing businesses do all day long - us web folk have it easy. There's lots of people out there to help, but they don't appear in Google.

Great idea, but if you don't use instagram (i.e. share your photos with the world) there is one alternative that I could find in 5 minutes of Googling: shoot it!

http://www.shootit.com/

They appears to send it from the nearest country you are in.

I don't think so. Their play is on speed and reduced postage, not on coolness of trip through the mail systems of the world:

From their faq:

"How can you deliver a card in Western Europe that fast? shoot it! has established an international distributed print and mail network. This means your card will print and mail the next business day from the country closest to your recipient’s address. This is how we eliminate the need for international postage and long transit times. Postcards destined to North America print and mail from the U.S. Soon, you will be able to send shoot it! postcards to Japan and South America. But again, you can send postcards "from" anywhere day one! "

Awesome. I don't have anyone's address though. I assume I can use their email and the service will send them a 'someone wants to send you a postcard, give us your address email' ?

unfortunately this app requires you to type in the physical address. But we do save it, so you'll never have to again

Then consider the above a feature suggestion. I actually think this would help you quite a bit. Here's why:

Using this app is an impulse decision. I'm three mimosas in and I have to send this to my friend who I have the inside joke with. Oh. No address. I guess I can email my friend, wait a day or two for a reply.. then phone-copy and phone-paste the address into your app, and pay a buck.

I think it's enough of a momentum killer that it would be a good idea to smooth out the process for the payer. The receiver has a post-card coming, so I think there's plenty of motivation to enter an address.. especially if you confirm to them who the sender of the postcard is, and assure them you won't use it for evil.

Plus, you could build up a database of addresses to emails if you wanted, and then receivers would only need to do this once. Seems like a win.

i agree ;)

Is there any way to pull addresses out of the iPhone address book? Or to sync with my google contacts list and pull only the ones whose physical address I have? Either of these would be awesome features.

Great app. Downloaded it and sent myself a post card.

I was approached about building a very similar postcard service last year. They biggest issue I saw was this. We don't keep track of people's mailing addresses any more. Do a thought experiment - how many of your friends or family's addresses can you remember? How many do you have in your computer address book? How many on Facebook? Very very few.

The first approach we came up with was exactly this - email the person explaining we have a postcard for them and requesting their address. It's probably the best solution.

One drawback is it kills the delight in a surprise postcard, though that is offset somewhat by anticipation.

Totally, but there's a hidden win here. You'd only have to do this the first time.. I'd let them keep my email-address-to-physical-address relationship if it meant being surprised next time I get a post card.

If it works out, suddenly they're the source of truth on physical addresses.. or something close to it. Seems like a service and dataset that has leverage.

You know, but don't do anything evil with it!

True. There could also be some kind of Xobni/Plaxo/etc. tie-in here to connect email addresses or phone numbers to mailing addresses.

I seriously woke up in the middle of the night last night thinking how I need to send my 84 year old grandma more postcards. This is so perfect for that.

The biggest photo service are the photos that are already on your phone

This is one great piece of wisdom I frankly would not have shared.

I would like to use this service from my Camera Roll, with or without Instagram.

I guess I could go to Target or Walmart and print via Bluetooth from my iPhone for pennies, write a note on the back of the picture, and then put a stamp on the picture and send it to family/friends.

I wonder if Polaroid will ever make a version of this that works with AirPrint:

http://www.amazon.com/Polaroid-CZA-20011B-Instant-Mobile-Pri...

Easier than teaching your grandparents how to use a computer.

There is a similar service on Android, but I think much of the value of a postcard is in the postmark, and the postmark is going to be 99 percent wrong on these.

It seems, from the article, you are not using apple's in-app billing. How did you get the app approved? I thought it was mandatory these days?

According to a tweet from Postagram is because the in-app billing is for in-app stuff, and can't be used for physical stuff.

"apple won't let us sell physical products with their billing system" http://twitter.com/postagram/status/57912193940852737

That is correct. Apple does not currently allow in-app billing for physical goods, but they also don't currently regulate physical goods purchases either.

just played with it.. really amazing...cheap too.

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