SocialPost - Experiment
📉 Context and Mission
Traditional postal services are gradually disappearing — post offices and mailboxes are closing, and services are becoming more expensive and less accessible. Meanwhile, e-commerce is booming, but it mainly focuses on large commercial shipments, failing to offer simple, social forms of communication like postcards or letters.
SocialPost is created to fill this gap by building a decentralized, volunteer-based delivery network that operates through Telegram communication and people’s daily routes. Our mission is to restore closeness and the personal touch in sending messages.
🚶 Delivery Formats and Roadmap
| Version | Delivery Formats | Milestone | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Postcards | From launch | Telegram bot, volunteer routes, basic payment and tracking |
| 2.0 | Postcards, letters, micro-parcels | ≥ 100,000 deliveries per year | Volunteer ranking, physical partner pickup points |
| 3.0 | Parcels up to 5 kg | ≥ 1,000,000 deliveries after v2.0 | Trusted partners, insurance, returns handling, courier integrations |
💬 Core System Components
1. Telegram Chatbot
Intuitive, natural communication without the need to install additional apps
Supports three user roles:
- Sender — creates a shipment
- Volunteer — transports the shipment along the route
- Recipient — tracks the shipment status
2. Delivery Route
- Each shipment gets a unique ID consisting of a 3-word phrase (e.g., forest.stone.echo)
- Every handover is recorded and saved in the database
- Full route history available for transparency
3. Payments and Settlements
- Senders can pay at any stage: before sending, during transit, or after delivery
- Funds go to the SocialPost Foundation account
- After delivery, payments are automatically split among route participants (equally or proportionally)
4. SocialPost Foundation
- Legal nonprofit entity
- Enables collecting donations and grants, maintaining official accounting
- Facilitates partnerships with municipalities and NGOs
✈️ Sample Delivery Flow
Sender
- Sends the bot the command: “Send a postcard”
- Provides sender and recipient locations
- Receives a unique shipment ID, e.g., flower.wind.bag
- Writes the ID on the postcard and gives it to the first volunteer
Volunteer
- Sends the bot: “I have postcard flower.wind.bag”
- Receives details: who sent it, where to deliver, and payment status
- Hands the postcard to the next volunteer or the recipient
Recipient
- Sends the bot the shipment ID: flower.wind.bag
- Receives current route info and delivery status
💳 Financial Model
Revenue Sources
- Voluntary or suggested fees for shipments (e.g., 3 PLN per shipment)
- Donations via website and chatbot via direct payment (no-fees)
- Grants and programs supporting civic and social innovation
Fund Allocation
- Share for volunteers and participants handling the delivery
- Funds to maintain and develop the SocialPost system
Transparency
- Share monthly bills for bot API maintainance and database hosting
- Share statistics about volunteers, settlements, shipments - monthly, yearly
⚠️ Disclaimer
This document presents only a concept and a mental experiment. SocialPost is not an existing service and is shared purely out of curiosity and to inspire discussion.