Rocketboom

Giles Turnbull (aka @gilest) is a fun loving Brit who recently decided to take his Twitter account offline (literally), and to conduct his twitter correspondence by old-fashioned mail instead. What was the result of this little experiment? “Getting mail was fun again.” Woo-hoo…

It struck Mr. Turnbull that traditionally, letters and postcards were often communiqués more akin to our contemporary Facebook status and Twitter updates - short, concise tidbits of info, that were no longer than they needed to be - rather than the longwinded and wordy things our parents used to make us write to our grandparents on holidays and anniversaries. Turnbull notes:

When Turnbull stopped posting to Twitter, and started tweeting via the post instead, he had to handwrite, stamp and send off (sometimes overseas) each message, and await the reply (all the participants in the experiment were asked to respond by regular post as well). Eventually, the responses came. This mail-game continued for weeks, and, soon enough, mail time became the favorite time of day. He ended the experiment complete with a stack of cool postcards and a Pavlovian response to the “DING” of his doorbell when the post arrives.

So is this the death of email and social media updates? Methinks not. Even Giles himself is active on Twitter again these days. But hey, try it out. It’s a luke-warm-fun little idea that just might keep the USPS from going bankrupt… Maybe…