Twitter-by-Post, A Snail Mail Project Uses Postcards to Create Tweets

Freelance writer Giles Turnbull had an idea to respond to his Twitter feed by snail mail using postcards. For each tweet he received from the lot of pre-chosen volunteers, he responded with a mailed postcard and urged them to do the same. The project, Twitter-by-post, “wasn’t an attempt to reject the internet—it was a way of celebrating it”.

Giles described the entire project on The Morning News with plenty of images:

The mechanics of it took a while to work out. Most difficult was replicating my personal Twitter timeline—how could I post the same thing to everyone? Well, by writing it out lots of times.

For those “public” tweets, I wrote the same thing out 15 times, on 15 cards, and sent them to 15 different people. This took every moment as long as you might think; possibly a little longer.

Other tweets were easier to do. The analogue of sending an @reply or a DM is simply sending one card to one person. Much simpler. Soon after starting the project, I settled on these as the best way of communicating.