Who Does This?

During the dotcom explosion, sending electronic greeting cards was, like, totally all the rage, for like a week. The silly cards soon spread like a bad case of viagra spam, and every dotcom start up tried making it big in the eCard game.

After all on holidays like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, nothing says "I don't really care enough about you to go to the store and find a card" then sending a free electronic card.

Well BlueMountain.com and eCards.com have solved that last problem: the cards aren't free anymore. Instead, users are required to particpate in the fee based membership program.

Now I understand that not everything can be distributed over the internet for free, and that everyone needs to make some money. But ecards, while a fun and sometimes funny distraction, are not exactly someone I would spend money on. In fact, to be blunt, I wouldn't spend money an ecard. I assume a lot of people feel the same way.

So as I said, I understand people want to make money. But since ecards have very little value, how do ecard businesses exist? Shouldn't they all have gone bankrupt already? WTF?