E-card is an electronic

postcard A postcard or post card is a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard, typically rectangular, intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Non-rectangular shapes may also be used but are rare. In some places, one can send a postcard f ...

greeting card A greeting card is a piece of card stock, usually with an illustration or photo, made of high quality paper featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthday ...

, with the primary difference being that it is created using

digital media In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, an ...

instead of paper or other traditional materials. E-cards are available in many different mediums, usually on various

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

sites. They can be sent to a recipient virtually, usually via

e-mail Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

or an instant messaging service. Since e-cards are

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

" content", they are highly editable, allowing them to be extensively personalized by the sender. They are also capable of presenting animated GIFs or videos.

Technological evolution

Since its conception in 1994 by

Judith Donath Judith Stefania Donath (born May 7, 1962) is an American computer scientist who is a fellow at Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard's Berkman Center, and the founder of the ''Sociable Media Group'' at the MIT Media Lab. She has written ...

, the technology behind the E-card has changed significantly. One technical aspect that remained mostly constant until 2019 was the delivery mechanism: the e-mail received by the recipient contains not the E-card itself, but an individually coded link back to the publisher's website that displays the sender's card.

History

The

metaphor was employed early in the life of the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

. The first postcard site, ''The Electric Postcard'' was created in late 1994 by

at the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

. It started slowly: 10-20 cards a day were sent in the first weeks, 1000-2000 a day over the first summer, and then it gained momentum rapidly. During the 1995-96 Christmas season, there were days when over 19,000 cards were sent; by late spring of 1996 over 1.7 million cards had been sent in total. The source code for this service was made publicly available, with the stipulation that users share improvements with each other. ''The Electric Postcard'' won numerous awards, including a 1995 GNN Best of the Net award.GNN 2nd annual best of the net

/ref> By mid-1996, a number of sites had developed E-cards. By mid-October 1996, directly emailable greeting cards and postcards ("Email Express") were developed and introduced by Awesome Cards, based on new capabilities introduced in the Netscape 3.0 browser. This is the first time the E-card itself could be emailed directly by the card sender to the recipient rather than having an announcement sent with a link to the card's location at the E-card site.E-cards Sent Directly Within Email Message Email Express
In 2001,

Hallmark A hallmark is an official Mark (sign), mark or series of marks struck on items made of metal, mostly to certify the content of noble metals—such as platinum, gold, silver and in some nations, palladium. In a more general sense, the term ''Wikti ...

artists Bob Holt and Mike Adair developed early incarnations of Hoops and Yoyo, which became one of the first recurring e-card characters.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:E-Card Stationery Ephemera Email

Technological evolution

History

See also

References