Happy Birthday! (dooyoo e-cards)

Member Name: Celandine

Product:	dooyoo e-cards
Date:	10/09/01 (736 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see opinion

Disadvantages: see opinion

I love you. Which is a good job, really, because unless it's your birthday, or I want you to join Dooyoo (and you're probably a member anyway, if you're reading this), then that's all I can tell you with Dooyoo's current range of e-cards.

I can tell you I love you in three ways, though. I can send my love in the form of big red hearts that rush across the screen, and explode into a border once you've clicked on the one in the middle. I can tell you I love you with cupid shooting an arrow through another red heart, although I'm not quite sure this one works since the preview shows you exactly the same card as the exploding border one. Oh, and I can tell you I love you with lots of red hearts that sort of drop down, and blink at you.

If it's your birthday, and, I've a 1/365 chance that it might be, then I can send you a card that you'll probably find cheering, unless of course it isn't your birthday, and you just find it a bit odd. I can send you some rather lovely multi-coloured balloons that rise up, with a big red balloon you pop to reveal my message. Or, I can send you a little bi-plane that flits across the sky, waving a banner that says 'Happy Birthday - (blank)'. If I choose 'I hope', as my message, then I'll have covered my back, anyway.

They're all quite nice, these cards. They're pretty; they're quite sweet. They're nice - fine, even. What they aren't, is groundbreaking, or particularly original, or so ooffy-doofily high-tech that they make me gasp in amazement. They're fine. If I was rating them then they'd be "Useful". The 'join Dooyoo' ones are more clever, and more original (well, it's more of an original message to send in the first place), but they don't really tell you much about the site.

However, if I want to tell someone about Dooyoo, then I'm probably not going to send them an e-card in the
first place. I'd probably write a really boring email, then maybe put an e-card on top. I might even wish that poor someone "happy birthday", quite by accident.

And, to be honest, I'm not a massive fan of e-cards anyway. I'm a fan of squishy parcels, wrapped in brown paper, and string. If I want to send good wishes then I want to send things that people can touch, and feel. I like little silly presents, and home-made cards. You can't touch e-cards, and, unless you've chosen them really carefully, they can sometimes seem a bit impersonal. Plus, sometimes the really whizz-bang high-tech ones can take so long to load on more elderly computers that the recipient spends half their time wishing that you didn't love them in the first place.

They do have their uses, though. Sometimes you make friends online and don't wish to ask for addresses. You might want to send an urgent greeting. You might forget someone's birthday, or forget you love someone, and suddenly need to send them lots of exploding animated hearts just to remind them.

To be honest, I probably wouldn't ever send exploding pink hearts to someone I love, anyway. If I love you, and I need, for whatever reason, to send an e-card, then I'd probably go to google, or some other search engine, and type in e-cards with a key word - a word that reflected your interests or something I think you'd find funny. Just like, if I'm browsing around a card shop, then I'll look to see what is there, to find something that I think you'll like. And there are loads of cards in card shops, and loads of clever, funny, whizz-bang, silly free e-cards out there on the net.

There are plenty of opinions sites on the net, too, but I do like Dooyoo. There are lovely people here, you see. There are people that write extraordinary, funny, moving opinions, and people who write original, eccentric opinions. There are people who write extraordi
narily factual opinions, and people who write succinct reviews. There are people who write a very few, wonderful, opinions, and people who write lots of not-so-wonderful opinions. All this doesn't matter, because the opinions are all original, and so they always give you something when you've read them. It's a personal site, Dooyoo, and it's a community, too.

That's partly why I'm so disappointed with its choice of greetings. I mean, entering Dooyoo is like entering a vast informal library of people's experiences. Having a range of cards, to send is a lovely idea, and it's nice to have the facility, but I'd love the range of cards to reflect the site. Now, I'm not saying we should have cards that we can all send to one another; cards that say "Good op", or "Congratulations on the crown", or "I'd love to see a bit more information, if you ever care to add some, then I'll gladly come back and re-rate". I'm not talking about cards that ask writers to write more, either, or ones that ask churners to stop churning, although the possibilities are endless, and make me laugh. I'd just like to see a range of cards that reflects the quirkiness, the loveliness, the individuality of the site a bit more.

We could even have cards that use opinions - be they silly passages from funny opinions, or collections of soup recipes. Bits of positive thinking, maybe? I don't know, but the writing on Dooyoo is so original, and the e-cards, well, they aren't. Anyway, I love you, and I don't particularly want to send you an e-card full of exploding hearts. I'm not sure that I'd want to send you an e-card full of recipes for soup, but wouldn't it be more appropriate than wishing you happy birthday when it isn't? And the balloon card has to be the best of the bunch, if we're looking at jolly graphics. But let's be more original, more personal, more like Do
oyoo itself. Oh, and "Happy Birthday", just in case.

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