Postfully Yours

Given the near-daily news of social networks creating a new internet revolution, curing cancer, and serving man (run!), it was long-past time for Postful to join in.

Social networks have the potential to create new and flexible social bonds, for those within the network. But the digital divide remains real and leaves most of the world excluded.

Many of key connectors of our real social networks are not using computers. In my family (and many others), it’s the generation that isn’t online that most closely ties us all together. It’s precisely as these digital networks become more important to our social interactions that it becomes critical that we maintain those connections and what they represent.

Obviously (from our perspective), incorporating mail into the process opens up some interesting opportunities to bridge this divide. Printed mail offers a way to connect to anyone, regardless of their technological status.

Certainly for social networks focused on family and genealogy, this is essential (and potentially a defining feature). Imagine making it easy to set up mail newsletters which summarize family news for non-computer users or sending out copies of family-trees to get feedback from those who know the history best. Think of the potential reach of the network that gets this right.

More importantly, unless we make the effort, we are at risk of losing some key pieces of all of our ‘social graphs’ and, with them, an important part of our real connections. With new tools, we have an chance to connect billions using formats with which they’re comfortable and that they want to use. We can finally start to fill in the social graph and add one more way for our tools to connect rather than divide.