Flashback Friday/ Remember E-cards?

Are you old enough to remember E-cards? Or better yet, do you recall anything web-related prior to Facebook? This morning I was thinking about the many technologies and web related trends that I have taken part in over the years as a result of my commitment to Art Paw.  E-cards were fun and yet rather time consuming to create. A long long time ago ... way before social media, web savvy businesses would offer free e-cards as a way to help their site traffic and give folks a reason to keep coming back. Below is a sample of some of the e-cards we offered.  The first image, top row is the very first digital painting I ever created of Atticus. We created e-cards for Christmas, Valentines day, Howl-o-ween, you name it, we had it.

Art Paw Screen Shot June 2002
taken using way-back machine

Art Paw Screen Shot June 2003
taken using way-back machine

I googled e-cards and discovered that some of the businesses and sites that were all about e-cards are still on-line and still serving up cards. Then I tried to find web articles about the decline of e-card usage. There was very little info on the topic, proving that once a trend dies on-line it dies with a whisper. One article of note is by Heather Dougherty called "Social networks displacing e-cards"... it is from Feb. 25, 2010.