UCG Affects Holiday Greeting Cards, Too

This year a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of the greet­ing cards we’ve received have been assem­bled from dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ated by our fam­ily mem­bers and friends. Most of these cards fea­ture fam­ily pho­tos and/or snap­shots of peak moments through­out the year; a few are totally hand­made, artsy, often col­lages with no dig­i­tal ele­ments.

What strikes me is the way the pop­u­lar­ity of user-cre­ated con­tent in online and social net­work­ing are­nas may be sub­tly influ­enc­ing how peo­ple pre­fer to com­mu­ni­cate these days via hol­i­day greet­ing cards.

Clearly, it takes more effort to pro­duce per­son­al­ized cards than sim­ply buy­ing and sign­ing mass-mar­ket cards from Hall­mark. Given how busy most peo­ple are dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son, you have to assume the trend toward self-made cards and let­ters reflects fun­da­men­tal human needs to con­nect on a deeper level, to find out­lets for cre­ative expres­sion, share funny moments, and so on.

We’ve really enjoyed this out­pour­ing of per­son­al­ized greet­ing cards this year. And wish we had rec­i­p­ro­cated in a sim­i­lar fash­ion…