Travelers now have an easy way to send a personalized postcard and avoid wasting time searching for stamps or a post office. Grandparents can now get their mobile phone-obsessed grandchildren to send them pictures for their refrigerators. What happens in Vegas might no longer stay there.
Wish You Were HereSM cameraphone postcards are real postcards, personalized with a user’s photo, and mailed right from a mobile phone. Users simply text “WYWH” to the shortcode “69626” from their mobile phone to start using the service. They can turn that great snapshot taken with their phone into a postcard by just sending the picture to WYWH.mobi and visiting a simple mobile web site to enter a personal caption, message, and address. The WYWH(SM) service then prints and mails the postcard on the user’s behalf. No download is required to use the service, which relies only on SMS text messaging and a mobile phone browser like the one found on an iPhone, Treo, Blackberry, or Razr. Mobile browsers are now found on thousands of phone models.
The service launched this week with support from several U.S. carriers including AT&T, NEXTEL/Sprint, CellularOne, Boost Mobile, and Virgin Mobile and will soon be available on other major carriers. Customers can make their purchase by charging their wireless phone bill, as millions already do for ring-tones and other mobile content, or they can create an account at WYWH.mobi and pay via credit card or PayPal. The cost per postcard is $1.99 and includes printing, postage, and mailing of the postcard to any U.S. address. Customers can also purchase discounted pre-paid packs to store with their account. Standard text messaging rates apply.
“We hope our new customers will have as much fun and be as engaged as our pre-release users”, said Michael Angst, CEO of Stolen Bases (www.stolenbases.com), one of the two companies that partnered to provide the service. “We saw a wide range of uses -- from the couple that sent postcards from the top of the slopes in Aspen to the user who snapped a picture of a broken traffic sign to send to his mayor. I used it this week to help my daughter send a few personalized Valentines to our family.”
The mobile postcard service will also be available through an affiliate program. This program allows organizations of any size to reserve a keyword and provide branded postcards as a souvenir, promotion, or service.
“We are working on affiliate deals with sports teams, bands, and other event-driven organizations, where quickly sending a personalized, branded souvenir postcard provides a fun, innovative, viral mobile service that can generate additional revenues”, said Kris Ramanathan, CEO of netomat (www.netomat.com), the company that provides the mobile infrastructure that powers the service.
“Our first affiliate partner, Family Travel Forum, was pleased that we gave parents a way to manage usage. Their customers rely on them to provide family-friendly travel advice and resources, including tips for kids traveling on their own.” added Michael. “Parents can fund, then replenish, their teens’ use of the service when sending postcards from camp, concerts, college or Spring Break.”
Try it Now! Just text WYWH to 69626.
About WYWH
WYWH is a recently launched joint venture between netomat (www.netomat.com), a leader in mobile community solutions, and Stolen Bases (www.stolenbases.com), a Company that brings big-company capabilities to individuals, small businesses, and disenfranchised communities.
About Family Travel Forum
Founded in 1996 for travelers who “Have Kids, Still Travel,” Family Travel Forum (www.familytravelforum.com) provides vacation websites that contain vast libraries of destination research, including first-hand reviews of tropical and ski resorts, attractions, reunions and multi-generational travel, holiday weekends, family festivals, cruises and more