A report out from CNN Money says USPS board chief Mickey Barnett said the board has directed the USPS to “evaluate price increases,” while also noting that, “as a board we are loathe to pursue this approach.”

It’s no secret that the post office is struggling to make ends meet these days. You’ve most likely heard of the grand plan to eliminate Saturday mail service, but that approach was recently shut down, or at least delayed, as Congress, last month, passed a resolution that the USPS said gave it no choice but to backtrack. More on that here.

In April, the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing in which Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe discussed the Postal Service’s losses.

“In the past two years, the Postal Service has recorded $21 billion in losses, including a default of $11.1 billion in payments to the United States Treasury,” he said. “The Postal Service has exhausted its borrowing authority and continues to contend with dangerously low liquidity. We are losing $25 million a day, and we are on an unsustainable path.”

First class mail use has dropped 28% since 2007, he said, complaining that restrictive laws governing the Postal Service prevent it “from fully responding to these changes in consumer behavior.”

Something has to give somewhere. Unfortunately for consumers, that may mean paying more to send mail.

Do you want to see Saturday mail stay, or is it better off as a thing of the past? Let us know in the comments.

Congress recently passed a resolution that the USPS claims gives it no choice but to backtrack on getting rid of Saturday mail. The new schedule (which would have seen packages continue to be delivered on Saturdays) was set to take effect in early August. Now it remains to be seen how long we’ll be able to enjoy Saturday mail.

The USPS says the plan would have saved about $2 billion a year, and would help restore the USPS to financial stability as it continues to face obstacles of the era (digital and otherwise). At least the USPS (as far as we know) is still launching a clothing line.

Rep. Darrell Issa has scheduled a hearing for next week to analyze the “motivations” for the move. He’s quoted by The Washington Times:

“The Postal Service’s decision to first pursue modified Saturday delivery and then renege on its cost-cutting plan has seriously set back efforts to advance postal reform legislation,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “This hearing will allow us to review a wide variety of options to bring the troubled agency back from insolvency.”

Rep. Blake Farenthold, who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees the USPS, disagrees with the approach the Post Office is taking now. Chron reports:

Farenthold disagreed with the board’s assessment, saying that he thinks the language in place does not bar cutting Saturday deliveries.

“Contrary to the Board of Governors’ decision, blaming a congressional mandate for preventing implementation of modified Saturday delivery, I believe that the modified 6-day delivery met all congressional requirements for moving forward,” Farenthold said in a hearing on Wednesday.

Following is the USPS’s full statement:

The Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service met April 9 and discussed the Continuing Resolution recently passed by Congress to fund government operations. By including restrictive language in the Continuing Resolution, Congress has prohibited implementation of a new national delivery schedule for mail and packages, which would consist of package delivery Monday through Saturday and mail delivery Monday through Friday, and which would have taken effect the week of Aug. 5, 2013.

The Board continues to support the Postal Service’s five-year business plan and the legislative goals identified in that plan, which will return the Postal Service to financial solvency. The Board additionally urges Congress to quickly pass comprehensive postal legislation, including provisions that would affirmatively provide the Postal Service with the ability to establish an appropriate national delivery schedule.

Do you agree with the USPS? Should the post office keep Saturday mail? Tell us what you think.

For many, the Mail app is probably the most used app in the Metro interface. As such, Microsoft is making it easier to access mail, especially for those with multiple accounts. The new version of the Mail app now displays all your accounts, and allows users to toggle between them with ease.

The new Mail app can also filter unread messages, or you can put mails into separate folders. A lot of these features are already present in popular email clients like Gmail, but it’s nice to see Microsoft finally adding these features into its own Mail app.

The Calendar app received a few small updates, including colored appointments to make the calendar “easier to read.” The Calendar also features a new Work week view for those who operate on a Monday through Friday schedule.

The People app received a new update in the form of easier sharing. Now users can right-click or swipe from the top to reveal app commands. These commands allow you to easily move between your own profile and the What’s New page that features updates from your friend’s various social network accounts.

Unfortunately, the updates haven’t been completely painless for some. The Verge is reporting that Windows 8 users with a Google account are seeing errors related to Google discontinuing support for Exchange ActiveSync. Google dropping support for EAS was expected, but those who had set up a Google account on Windows 8 before January 30 were promised that they could still use it.

There’s no fix available for Gmail users just yet, but everybody else should be able to take advantage of the new apps without any problem. To do so, just hit up the Microsoft Store Settings, click (or tap) on App Updates, and select the Check for Updates option.

In an attempt to make things easier for its customers, the Postal Service has even introduced a new service for packages recently that includes giving the customer the ability to pay for and print their own shipping labels at home, then schedule a pick-up using one of the service’s flat-rate boxes. But the agency says it will continue to make packages a priority even as it prepares to end Saturday mail service, scheduled to begin this summer.

Should the Postal Service end Saturday mail delivery? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Packages will still get delivered six days a week, even if regular mail will not. The USPS has been battling Congress for several years now in an effort to get the measure approved, and many are wondering exactly how the agency–which is largely considered quasi-governmental and relies on Congressional approval for all measures–can get away with making the decision for five-day delivery itself.

Apparently, Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe has found a loophole in the system involving the fiscal cliff impasse; even though every appropriations bill Congress has passed for the USPS in the past thirty years has included a six-day mail delivery mandate, they have yet to pass the bill for 2013, which is still operating under the “continuing resolution” the federal government is under due to the fiscal cliff. Unless Congress passes a bill mandating six-day delivery by March 27th–which Donahoe knows is extremely unlikely–the USPS is legally allowed to act on its own. The measure comes at a time when polling shows 70% of Americans support cutting Saturday delivery, especially if it saves the agency a projected $2 billion annually as promised. It would also negate the need to hike up stamp prices, an idea which garnered many protests when it was submitted to the public.

“The Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial realities resulting from America’s changing mailing habits,” Donahoe said in a statement. “We developed this approach by working with our customers to understand their delivery needs and by identifying creative ways to generate significant cost savings.”

The USPS also acknowledges that this doesn’t mean it won’t need the help of Congress later on, as the agency is not taxpayer-funded. It wants the support of its customers when it comes to changing legislation in the future.

“While the change in the delivery schedule announced today is one of the actions needed to restore the financial health of the Postal Service, legislative change is urgently needed to address matters outside the Postal Service’s control,” reads the statement. “The Postal Service continues to seek legislation to provide it with greater flexibility to control costs and generate new revenue and encourages the 113th Congress to make postal reform legislation an urgent priority. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.”

But despite the growing support the country has shown for the decision, not everyone is happy about it; some companies are worried about the impact the move will have on their business. Those who rely on Saturday mail service to keep customers happy–such as Hallmark–say it could prove to be a bad choice for everyone involved.

Hallmark released a statement about the news on its website:

While we know this option was one of many the USPS has recommended in the past, the Postal Rate Commission believes the cost savings from this move would be less than the postal service estimates, especially if they continue to deliver parcels on Saturday.

Hallmark continues to believe a reduction in service will not induce customer loyalty and will negatively impact small towns and small businesses that depend on timely, affordable, reliable mail delivery. This move should only be considered once all other cost-saving options are fully explored and acted upon.

Time Warner is another company which could be affected by the loss of a delivery day, as they are the largest magazine publisher in the U.S. Blogger Chris Kotje predicts that magazine editors will be scrambling to meet deadlines in an effort to get their product to the customer in a shorter block of time…meaning increased labor costs.

On the other side of the coin, we have delivery companies like UPS and FedEx, which may well profit from a 5-day delivery system. Even though the USPS is adamant that packages will still be delivered six days a week, there’s always the possibility that some customers might not understand or trust the new schedule and take their business elsewhere. Revenues for both UPS and FedEx are expected to jump up to 5% in the next year.

Finally, there are those companies one would assume might be opposed to the changes but are surprisingly casual about the possibility of no weekend mail delivery. Netflix may have relied heavily on mail service to deliver DVDs and games to their customers in recent years, but they also have a growing streaming community which allows customers to pay a fixed amount each month for access to hundreds of titles right on their television or computer. That means a lessened dependence on snail mail.

All in all, it will be interesting to see exactly what effects the move will have on these businesses and others when it goes into effect during the week of August 5th. And how long it will take the USPS to recover once it puts it into action?

Is this the right move for the USPS? Let us know what you think.

Can the post office survive the digital age? Tell us what you think.

A report from the New York Times is all but predicting the U.S. Postal Service’s demise. “The agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances,” the report says.

“If Congress doesn’t act, we will default,” Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe is quoted as saying.

Whew we discussed the subject before, Bloomberg BusinessWeek had put out a lengthy report looking at the decline of the USPS and its contributing factors. While touching on email, it looked more at comparison of USPS performance versus that of FedEx, UPS and DHL, as well as their international counterparts.

Despite talk that social media might one day kill email, email has proven time and time again that it is still a vital part of the Internet. A report from Pew Internet recently found that email (along with search) is the top activity online adults engage in on the web – way more than social media (though that’s growing significantly).

Unfortunately for the USPS, that conversation is irrelevant, because social media and email go hand in hand when it comes to less communication by “snail mail” – a phrase that the post office no doubt despises.

One can only imagine how mobile has contributed to even more communication by web over mail. Now the Internet is in your pocket at all times, not to mention the phone – another classic non-mail form of communication. Last week, Nielsen put out a report finding that 40% of mobile users in the U.S. use smartphones.

Of course email isn’t the only part of the web that is hurting the post office. Online bill pay is a big contributor as well – also now handily available from your pocket.

It’s just easier, cheaper and more efficient to communicate digitally.

Total mail volume decreased by 20% from 2006 to 2010, according to that Bloomberg report. The numbers can only be getting worse for the post office.

There will always be packages, but the digital age certainly continues to leave its mark on those as well. Movies, music and books are all digital now. Earlier this year, Amazon announced that Kindle books were outselling print books. Tablet (namely iPad) sales are on fire. The USPS also has to compete with those other parcel services too.

The Postal Service’s payment is due on September 30. From the sound of it, consumers wouldn’t likely feel the effects so much until early next year. At least the post office should remain open for the holidays.

Is the USPS in serious trouble or is this just a temporary set-back? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Do you think email is killing the post office, or at least contributing to its demise? Share your thoughts here.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek has put out a lengthy report looking at the decline of the USPS and its contributing factors. While the seven-page pice just briefly touches upon the subject of email, comparing the performance of the USPS to that of FedEx, UPS, and DHL, as well as counterparts in other countries, there’s no question that email and online communication in general have done their fair share of damage.

People have been using email for years now, and despite some predicting the death of email (at the hands of social media), it’s clear that it’s hear to stay for quite some time. Even if email were to die, it wouldn’t do much to help the postal service.

As we’ve seen just in the past week alone, email is an incredibly important part of business for companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Twitter. Even Facebook has its own email now, and social networks all still rely on email to keep users engaged – that goes for the professionals too (ie: the newly public LinkedIn).

In a recent study, 45% said that their use of email at work will most likely increase in the next five years. 51% said that it would likely stay the same. Only 4% thought it would decrease. At home, 36% of those surveyed thought their email use will increase, 55% said it will stand pat and 6% said it will likely decrease.

The majority of important online communication still takes place through email, whether that be B2B or B2C. C2C online communication may be trending more toward social media, but again, email still plays a role here, in terms of notifications, and there is still plenty of C2C communication through email. Even from heavy users of social media. Not everyone is on the same social network. That even goes for Facebook. Email is universal. You pretty much need an email address to have any kind of account online.

The rise of mobile, and smartphones in particular, must also play a role, as it caters to increased use in email and social media, not to mention text messaging, and even….the phone call! The point is, communication is always as close as your pocket. It’s a lot easier and cheaper (at least on an individual interaction basis) than writing letters. And it’s in real time.

“With the rise of e-mail and the decline of letters, mail volume is falling at a staggering rate, and the postal service’s survival plan isn’t reassuring,” Devin Leonard says in the Bloomberg BusinessWeek report, noting that the USPS is the country’s second-largest civilian employer after Walmart (with more post offices than the retail outlets of Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald’s combined). Last year its revenues were $67 billion, with even greater expenses, he says.

According to the report, first-class mail, which the USPS gets the majority of its money from, has been steadily declining, and in 2005 fell below junk mail for the first time. Total mail volume has decreased 20% just from 2006 to 2010. The USPS hasn’t been able to cover its annual budget in three years.

Well, there’s still packages right? Sure, but there’s also stiff competition from companies like FedEx, UPS, and DHL, along with an increase in digital goods replacing physical goods. Think movies, music, and books. Amazon, the largest retailer on the web, announced last week that Kindle books are outselling print books. Never mind that there are a bunch of free ones too.

Plus, everybody’s going paperless these days. The Director of Physical Infrastructure at the U.S. Government Accountability Office is quoted as saying, “What happens when Bank of America or Citigroup says you are going to have to pay to get your statement on paper? That’s going to change a lot of behavior. It’s going to affect the postal service. That’s how they make most of their money.”

The Bloomberg BusinessWeek report includes some interesting ideas on how the Postal Service could get back on track, at least to some extent, but the outlook is looking pretty bleak. You have to wonder what this will mean for the future of digital communication like email.

Are email taxes on the horizon? Tell us what you think.

Paul Misener, Amazon VP for Global Public Policy gave a testimony at a hearing in Washington on the future of the U.S. Postal Service (hat tip to Eric Engleman). Here are some notable quotes from that (the entire statement can be read here):

"Amazon enjoys a strong and extensive relationship with the Postal Service. The USPS is an integral part of the service we provide our customers. Globally, we spent well over a billion dollars last year on outbound shipping – an increase of over 20% from 2008. In dollars, we spend nine figures annually on the USPS, with over two million shipments per average week via the Postal Service."

"While they may be willing to wait until Monday or Tuesday for a bill they don’t really want; an advertisement they didn’t ask for; or a magazine to which they subscribed long ago; they expect the items they purchased this week to be delivered as soon as possible."

Netflix takes a different view. "A well-functioning Postal Service, positioned over the long haul to meet changing customer and consumer demand, is more important than maintaining current delivery frequency," said Netflix chief service and DVD operations officer, Andrew Rendich, at that hearing. (via Bloomberg Businessweek)

While Netflix certainly accounts for a great deal of mail deliveries around the country, its interests are quite different than those of Amazon’s, so the difference in opinion isn’t that hard to believe.

For one, Netflix believes the future is in streaming when it comes to movies, and it would just as soon have customers using its streaming service more. In fact, the company is making deals with distributors to bolster their streaming catalog. Don’t be surprised if streaming becomes the main business model for the company in the future.

At the same time, it is also in Netflix’s best interest for customers to rent a lower rate of DVDs by mail. This means less shipping costs for them while they get to charge the same amount to customers. Amazon on the other hand wants to get its products to customers as quickly as possible to keep them ordering more.

What do you think about the idea of Saturday mail delivery coming to an end? Are you for it or against it? Discuss here.

The one-stop contact shop idea floated by Yang about Yahoo Mail getting smarter looks like it has another aspect. While advertising already has a place in Yahoo’s email client, the company may be interested in capitalizing on all that social data people will tap.

Resource Shelf pointed out a published patent application from Yahoo that relates to this point. The application bears the title, “Monetization Of Characteristic Values Predicted Using Network-Based Social Ties.”

The patent’s abstract illustrated how this would work to make money for Yahoo:

A method is provided to predict a value for a particular characteristic of a particular user of network-based services. A plurality of other users, other than the particular user, is determined, wherein the particular user has social ties to the plurality of other users.

The predicted value for the particular characteristic of the particular user is monetized, such as by selling advertising to be caused to be displayed to at least the particular user. For example, requested compensation for the advertising is determined based at least in part on the predicted value for the particular characteristic of the particular user.

By identifying a value for a given individual user, Yahoo could conceivably charge an advertiser more for reaching someone who, by virtue of their social networking relationships, should be a more valuable target for the marketing message.

The implementation of such a technology will be closely watched by the same privacy advocates and normal social networkers who complained bitterly about Facebook’s Beacon program. Facebook had to reshuffle its attempt to monetize people’s e-commerce activities.

Yahoo’s patent works behind the scenes, rather than the public fashion of Beacon. How people react to the technology could depend on how relevant and useful they find the sharply targeted advertising coming from it.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/yahoo-mail-socializing-all-about-the-money-2008-01/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/yahoos-future-smarter-email-and-mobiles-2008-01 http://www.webpronews.com/yahoos-future-smarter-email-and-mobiles-2008-01#comments Tue, 08 Jan 2008 11:12:43 +0000 WebProNews Staff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=43132 CEO Jerry Yang told the CES 2008 crowds about Yahoo’s plans to make its Mail client a social tool with all the widgets one could want.

Web browser? So 1994. How about a mail client that knows your social networks and will give the most important messages and people priority in the inbox?

Yahoo’s latest announcement from the big Las Vegas show noted the potential for Yahoo Mail to be what we remember Microsoft fearing from Netscape: a tool that doesn’t care about the underlying operating system.

Why have all kinds of applications and browser windows open when Yahoo Mail can do it all? That will mean opening Mail to third party developers, and the other big Yahoo told the CES audience this is close to reality:

“Yahoo! has today outlined what is possible and that the future is not that far away,” said David Filo, co-founder and Chief Yahoo!. “Yahoo! is uniquely positioned to make this all a reality – we have scale, a huge community of users, great applications and APIs and insightful data. We now have an open platform for third party developers to build some interesting applications.”

Yang suggested Yahoo Mail could tap the Facebooks and MySpaces of the world in a way to make the email client more “personally relevant” to its users. Important people, apparently, would not have their messages languishing in the inbox, awaiting attention, because Yahoo would bring them to the user’s attention.

Also, Yang talked about the big push Yahoo has been making into the mobile world. We think Yahoo believes it can win the kind of share of usage on phones that Google enjoys with search and ads on PCs. Millions of mobile users worldwide makes that a goal worth achieving.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/yahoos-future-smarter-email-and-mobiles-2008-01/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/yahoo-and-jetblues-arrangement-2007-12 http://www.webpronews.com/yahoo-and-jetblues-arrangement-2007-12#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2007 18:46:07 +0000 Pat McCarthy http://www.webpronews.com/?p=42673 The announcement that Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger are partnering with Jet Blue to offer lightweight wifi services on flights is both extremely cool, and kind of sad at the same time for me.

Being that I’m traveling a lot now for work it becomes readily apparent when I’m in the air that it’d be nice to be able to connect to the web in order to get work done and communicate with colleagues, friends, and family.

The announcement that Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger are partnering with Jet Blue to offer lightweight wifi services on flights is both extremely cool, and kind of sad at the same time for me.

Being that I’m traveling a lot now for work it becomes readily apparent when I’m in the air that it’d be nice to be able to connect to the web in order to get work done and communicate with colleagues, friends, and family.

However, in a weird way I also treasure those few hours of internet-free time to read documents or get stuff done that is harder to focus on with connectivity distractions. It’s also a good time to just relax on occasion by reading a book or watching a movie. I guess as connectivity hits the friendly skies it will just be another place I’ll have to learn to block out distractions to relax or be extremely productive.

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