Mike Bowler

I was at a Send Out Cards (SOC) event in Mississauga on the weekend. In talking with other people, I was quite surprised how many people use primarily stock cards from the SOC catalog rather than custom cards.

For those who aren't familiar with SOC, you can send physical greeting cards from your computer that get printed and dropped in the mail from their location. I use it a LOT.

Granted, there are over 12,000 stock cards there so it's not hard to find something appropriate. The reason is surprised me is that not only are custom cards more personal, they're also a lot of fun to create. The SOC site makes it really easy to stick thought or speech bubbles on a photo you've uploaded so it's trivial to create something that's highly personalized.

I generally only send a stock card if I don't have an appropriate photo for the person I'm sending the card to. Even if I don't have a photo of my own, I've found quite a few appropriate photos from searching flickr (the only gotcha here is that you have to watch the licensing to see whether the photographer is ok with you using the pictures).

Based on what I saw on the weekend, I seem to be in the minority. I'd really like to know why most people seem to be sending stock cards. It really isn't that difficult to do one that's custom.