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eCards Too Much Work? Procrastinators Send Video Cards From Phones

by Caleb Johnson on March 11, 2010 at 02:20 PM

Forget thumbing through racks of paper greeting cards. Some card companies are now offering a video alternative on cell phones. According to The New York Times, American Greetings has taken the lead, and is now offering short video messages that are selected from a Web site and sent to a phone. Best of all, these e-cards are available to customers of all the major service providers. You don't need a data plan to send or receive a greeting, but you will have to pay an annual $15.99 subscription fee. That price will get you access to about 500 video cards, with plans for thousands more. Yet, unless you're a chronic card sender, Hallmark's pay-as-you-go service seems like a better option. It costs just 99-cents to send a card from the Web to a cell phone.

While video greetings aren't about to eclipse text messages in popularity, some predict they do have huge market potential. Portio Research, a British firm, estimates it'll be worth about $31.5 billion by the end of this year. We'd be open to dropping some cash on a video greeting and saving a trip to the store -- unless there's a pricey subscription fee. Then, a simple hug or phone call on a friend's birthday will suffice. [From: The New York Times]

Tags: cellphone, ecards, greetingcards, iphone, messaging, texting, top, trends, video

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