E-Cards Are Dead... Except on Mother's Day

Jolie O'Dell — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:11:31 -0800

After looking over recent stats from Hitwise Intelligence on the decline of e-cards and the simultaneous rise of social media, we were stopped mid-yawn by this weird little blip on the radar:

On Mothers' Day, e-cards show a less drastic YoY decline, and social media visits actually temporarily plunge, showing a 13 percent decrease in site visits between Mothers' Day 2008 and Mothers' Day 2009. Do we think Mom isn't checking her Facebook? Or is it that we consider a more old-fashioned and difficult method of communication more "personal" somehow?

]]> We asked a couple Twitter friends about this phenomenon. According to one respondent, if a mom is on Facebook, she's fair game to start receiving her digital greetings there. On the other end of the spectrum, we were also asked, "Oh my, what happened to paper cards and handwriting?"

But Mothers' Day aside, e-cards are definitely a dying breed. Between 2008 and 2009, e-card site visits were down around 30 percent for most holidays. The exceptions were Mothers' Day, Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving. Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving still showed robust social media use, however.

It's also to be noted that most networks have built-in reminder mechanisms for quicly and simply sending greetings to friends, while e-cards sites have to rely on your shoddy memory and sense of guilt to get their traffic.

What is it about moms that make us abandon the computer to wish them well on their special day?

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Mothers Day Logos Over the Years from Google

Lidija Davis — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:09:10 -0800

But for their first year, Google has been changing its home page logo every Mother's Day in a tribute to mothers everywhere. And although the images for the years 2000 and 2001 don't look very different, take a closer look (images below) and you'll find a small but interesting distinction.

We took this year's image from Google Australia, but you should see it on all of Google's sites now.

]]> Google 2009 Mothers Day Logo

Google 2008 Mothers Day Logo

Google 2007 Mothers Day Logo

Google 2006 Mothers Day Logo

Google 2005 Mothers Day Logo

Google 2004 Mothers Day Logo

Google 2003 Mothers Day Logo

Google 2002 Mothers Day Logo

Google 2001 Mothers Day Logo

Google 2000 Mothers Day Logo

Wishing all of our readers and all of our moms (and mums) a happy Mother's Day!

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mothers day - ReadWriteWeb

E-Cards Are Dead... Except on Mother's Day

Mothers Day Logos Over the Years from Google