Enjoy the BBQs (or whatever else you have planned)!

In the meantime, the key thing to note is that none of your letters are lost.  They are held and will be processed as soon as Amazon’s services are back online.  Our system is designed to avoid losing messages in the event that even large portions of our service go down (no failover system is perfect, but this has been a high priority for us).

We’ll update here as soon as the situation changes.

UPDATE: Things seem to be back online.  We’ll be monitoring closely to make sure this is a stable fix.

This change is obvious in much of the online world. It’s a cliché to refer to blogs as conversations. Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and others are really only definable in terms of these new metaphors (what precisely would constitute a Facebook document or a Twitter desktop?).

Even the humble word processing document is adjusting to these new concepts. With online office suites, multiple users can work at the same time, link data into dynamic sources, and connect to external tools and outputs. Its no longer about the pile of papers (which may be odd coming from a company which produces precisely that).

Peeling the metaphor back, there are many elements to conversations which suggest entire areas of activity. The notion of open inclusion. The fundamentally collaborative element (you can have your own desktop, but conversations with yourself tend to lack a certain… richness). The way that a conversation can serve as the core to other activities. The very rules and norms of conversations among services and users are still being established.

One key in the way that we think about Postful has been of expanding conversations beyond the boundaries of the digital web. It still feels good each time we hear about someone using us to connect with a friend or family member.

Another element is the way that we work with and add value to other services. It’s not a matter of dominating the conversation, just adding a piece to it, enriching it.

Thinking about enhancing conversations rather than trying to build better tools and documents isn’t just a matter of following the latest metaphoric trend. It helps you to identify the core of current challenges and opportunities.

The metaphor is changing because the underlying reality has changed. The opportunities to develop that new reality can be seen just by thinking about how our service world still falls short of the metaphor. However it develops, it’s clear that we’re all participating in the redefinition of our basic concepts of computing.

First, let’s look at the details. This was a decline of 1.7 billion pieces for the quarter, largely attributable to declines in mortgage and financial services mailings.

Now, why do we think this is such a good thing? The answer is that the pressures of decline opens more room for competition and new ideas.

It’s common wisdom that you want to be in a growth market because growth exposes opportunity. The unlikely corollary is that being in a contracting market opens up just as many opportunities, as long as the market is large enough to support the decline. Print and mail are gigantic markets which can easily absorb decades of continued contraction (as they will have to).

But this is good for these industries. Competition in the print world has focused increasingly on price rather than innovation. Contraction makes that strategy dangerous and generally leads to a dramatic contraction in the total number of firms.

Given that, firms are forced to look for new ways to compete. Faced with change or extinction, many firms will stumble towards the later. But enough will attempt innovation to break down institutional barriers. The net result is a more uncertain and fluid market for all players.

And this is just what we’re positioned to take advantage of. Postful is built on a new model for print and mail focused on integration with digital tools and information. This is perhaps the most important growth area within this overall declining market.

All of this puts us in a great position to take advantage of the dynamics of change and build out a strong position to expand from here. It should be interesting to see how the rest of the market responds.

This is a great option for people who just want to send a single letter (or if you’d just like to try us out before using us more extensively).

Of course, you can still add larger blocks of funds to your account so that you don’t have to deal with payments each time. But now the option is yours.

In combination with Google Checkout and our previous support for all major credit cards, most of you should have enough options at this point.

Payments via barter and indentured servitude must still be handled by contacting us directly.