Access your snail mail online!
- Image by .girl ferment. via Flickr
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I logged on this afternoon, after taking some time away from the computer for the holidays, and slowly sifted through over 500 blog posts in Google Reader. One of them caught my eye from TechCrunch: Zumbox Delivers Paperless Mail. The concept behind this company is that they want to deliver standard snail mail to consumers using the Internet. An interesting concept but not necessarily a new one.
Many reality television viewers may have heard of another company attempting something similar called Earth Class Mail. The HD channel Mojo had a show on the air for a while called Start up junkies which was a reality show about Earth Class Mail (ECM) as a start up business and the details that went into launching the company. An interesting show if anyone is interested but Zumbox is attempting to do the same thing that ECM is only with a slight twist.
After watching the show for a while I did a little research into ECM and I have to admit their business intrigues me. They have a valid business concept here: they create mail boxes for people, scan all of the mail received into their system, then users can log-in and view their snail mail online just like they would normally read their e-mail. When I first heard the idea I couldn’t really think of anyone who would want this service. But after I thought about it for a while it definitely has a market. Those people that travel in RVs for long periods of time, individuals in the military, people who move around a lot and of course businesses (this is the big one).
When I heard about Zumbox I assumed they were attempting something similar, but after reading their website they are actually a little different. Zumbox wants to create a digital mail address for every physical address across the country because although everyone doesn’t have an e-mail address they do most certainly have a mailing address. So in reality they don’t really do much with snail mail at all… they are just an e-mail provider that uses home addresses as the message address instead of an @something.com tag.
Unless I’m missing something I really don’t see much of a market for this concept. Their entire idea revolves around the concept that not everyone has an e-mail address. While I agree that not everyone has an e-mail address I would argue that as the current young generation gets older pretty much everyone will have an e-mail address eventually thereby eliminating the need for their service. Also, if someone doesn’t have an e-mail address it’s probably because they didn’t want or know how to go online and make one. You have to go through a sign-up and confirmation process in order to use Zumbox so the user has to go through the same process which was probably the hinderance in the first place.
The whole concept of being able to access your snail mail online I think is a cool one but I wonder what it’s shelf life will be. How long until all snail mail is just delivered electronically? We are already starting to see it: banks are converting over to digital statements, utility companies allow you to view and pay bills online. I think it’s just a matter of time until snail mail may be in the minority as far as a way to deliver mail.
What do you think? Will snail mail always be around or are companies like ECM going to bridge the gap by scanning your mail for viewing online? Let me know what you think by posting your comments below.
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