02/14/2002

By DOUG BEDELL / The Dallas Morning News

For absent-minded spouses and significant others, e-card services on the Internet have provided a quick alternative to late-arriving snail mail and embarrassing confrontations on forgotten dates of major importance.Today – it's Valentine's Day, remember? – millions of last-minute love-wishers will scramble to e-card websites in a desperate effort to save face.

They may be slapped with a surprise.

The free card vendor they used last year may be charging for the service today. And, if the Christmas rush was any predictor, procrastinators could face delays in delivery because the remaining free websites are swamped.

According to figures compiled by Nielsen//Netratings, e-card websites are one of the fastest-growing sectors of Internet traffic. About 35 million people visited at least one card site in October, up 21 percent from 2000, the ratings service says.

Sending e-cards has become the fifth-most-popular Net activity, after e-mail, instant messaging, using search engines and shopping, says Nielsen//Netratings analyst Betty Yeh.

"Whenever I mention these kinds of numbers, people are always surprised," Ms. Yeh told The Associated Press. "This is a very significant activity."

So many people attempted to send last-minute electronic Valentines last year that e-card hot spots – including Egreetings .com, Hallmark.com and BlueMountain .com – suffered lengthy server crashes.

This year, most of the services have bolstered their Web capacities and are bracing for a record onslaught. But no one really knows what kind of volume to expect, especially considering that thousands of consumers will be confronted with new fees.

Before Christmas, three of the top five free e-card vendors – Bluemountain.com, Americangreetings.com and eGreetings .com – began charging $11.95 a year for unlimited access to their collections. For that price, members are permitted to set up an address book, add up to three family accounts and receive access to software tools for creating and printing cards at home.

Remaining free services such as Hallmark.com, Flowgo.com, PerfectGreeting .com and Greetings.Yahoo.com don't know what to expect in a spillover, but there are indications that droves of Net surfers may head their way.

Americangreetings.com, which now owns Blue Mountain and eGreetings and provides e-card services for America Online and MSN, has seen usage plunge about 30 percent since it started charging for access to the bulk of its collection.

Meanwhile, the free Yahoo Greetings service experienced a 91 percent increase in Christmas traffic, said Lisa Pollock, director of messaging products for Yahoo Inc.

"By December, we were doing 2 million a day, and we expect that Valentine's Day will be significantly higher than that," Ms. Pollock said. "We're ready for it."

As the Internet's top portal, Yahoo benefits from seasonal e-card traffic by grabbing better exposure to its advertising, goods and services. The company also uses the greeting cards to pull repeat traffic to its doorstep.

Like the fee sites, Yahoo allows users to set up calendars that can automatically schedule cards for delivery. Yahoo's e-card offerings also dovetail nicely with its free, ad-driven Yahoo e-mail. E-mail users can use their address books to quickly set up card mailings.

For Judy Bloomberry, a southwest Dallas homemaker who only recently got into the Internet habit, the discovery of free e-card deliveries has simplified a hectic lifestyle.

"I've got so much to remember to do already with my kids' schedules, my husband's traveling and everything else, I really appreciate not having to worry about sending out cards anymore," she said. "It wasn't until last year that most of my friends and relatives finally got e-mail accounts. After that, this step seemed like a no-brainer."

But, for many, receiving an e-card on special occasions just doesn't measure up to the paper alternative. Handwritten cards sent through the mail show more care and attention, they say.

"I hate those cards," wrote Dr. Leland Milton Goldblatt of Normal, Ill., in a recent Internet discussion on e-card Netiquette. "I have two friends that always forward stupid jokes and send me these crappy cards. Why not write a letter or just a note? I don't want to see stupid Java graphics. It takes too long to load and is waste of precious bandwidth!"

Despite the objections of those such as Dr. Goldblatt, electronic Valentine's cards may be unavoidable. Teenagers, in particular, seem to enjoy remaining anonymous while sending out dozens of unsigned e-cards to their crushes, experts say. There's no postmark to trace, no handwriting to give away their identities.

Blue Mountain, which was a free service last Valentine's Day, reported that visitors filled out its Web-based forms to create an incredible 250 cards per second. By the end of Valentine's Day 2001, 14.2 million e-cards had been sent from that service alone.

It remains to be seen whether the same users will be as enthusiastic about the fee model this year.

Websites including Britannica.com, Salon.com and Variety.com have recently shifted to pay models "without much success," said GartnerG2 analyst David Schehr.

"The reason people liked them in the first place was because they were convenient and free," he said. "Your friends got sick, you know their e-mail, you pop them a card instead of buying a card and sending it in the mail.

"The reason they did it was it didn't cost anything." Top e-greeting sites

SOURCE: About 35 million people visited at least one card site in October; usage overall is up 21% from a year ago, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Most popular

SOURCE: Nielsen/NetRatings