Meeting penpals after the existence of the Internet

The penpalling polls are a part of Penpalling & Letters since the beginning. Its purpose is to let readers express their opinion about certain topics regarding letter-writing. You can find them on the right area/column of the Blog while new ones are added in a regular basis. From time to time I will be going through them and posting results about a certain poll. You can find links to every poll results in the following post: Penpalling Polls.
In today's post we are going to review the poll about "Meeting penpals after the existence of the Internet". A while ago we had checked where we were meeting penpals before Internet was here. You can check it again in this link: "Meeting penpals before the existence of the Internet". Back to those times, possibilities to meet penpals were magazines, Penfriend Services, friendship books (FBs), summer camps, holidays, courses abroad to study the language... After Internet arrived, lots of new possibilities came up which lead to new ways of meeting penpals from far away countries. What some decades before seemed difficult to achieve, became easy to reach. With websites, forums, groups, social networks, blogs... spreading, getting in touch with people all over the world became an easier task. In the graphic above you can see that after Internet, the old ways to get in touch with new penpals became obsolete... Some of those still coexist with the Internet but some others, especially payment services, ended up disappearing (that was the case of "IYS-International Youth Service", which being unable to compete with the Internet had to close down in 2008 after 56 years of service). Taking into account the results observed in the plot it is clear that, nowadays, people prefer to use mostly the Internet to look for new penfriends.

This topic and some others are being discussed in the Penpalling & Letters group in Facebook, as well, so don't hesitate to join and participate.

Finally, don't forget to keep an eye in the Polls Section of the Blog from time to time as new polls are coming up often!

If you are looking for advice on penpalling check: "Tips on letter writing".