Twitter by Mail?

What would happen if your Twitter tweets were sent via mail instead of online? That's what Giles Turnbull asked himself one morning. Would it work? What would happen? Some of the answers to his questions are obvious, it was sure to cost more in postage and take a lot more time. But there were other revelations about the nature of our communications with each other that were not so obvious when he began the experiment.

First he had to work out the logistics, buy a lot of stamps, get the postal address of his followers, and determine how to replicate a tweet via postcard. Sending a tweet to all of his followers meant writing out the same message numerous times, so he limited the experiment to 15 followers. Still, that meant writing out his "tweet" 15 times and mailing it to 15 different people, some in foreign countries. A direct message, as with Twitter, could be sent to just one person. His followers agreed to respond in the same manner - via mail.

While it sounds like a tedious process, the emotive results were surprising. Turnbull found himself getting excited to receive his mail. "I began to associate the sound of the postwoman’s approach with the arrival of new, unusually personal messages. I’d get jumpy with excitement, and rush out to the hall the moment they’d been delivered." It turns out that getting mail with personal messages is fun. He began to wonder what letters were like before the advent of email and made some interesting discoveries. "Simple, short messages. That’s what the post was for. People love updates."

Today's postcard, Turnbull observes, has become an "obligation" to inform friends about your vacation. That is too bad because the short message on a postcard can be as imaginative, as funny or as interesting as a tweet. He learned the unique value of the written message:  "Conversations took longer, but they made just as much sense. If anything, they felt more real." He gained a new appreciation for the online and the offline.

Turnbull's article and samples of his postcard "tweets," can be seen at The Morning News.