The battle of free, holiday e-greetings cards .
“ElfYourself” by JibJab is classic. No matter how many times you send the holiday e-greeting card to friends and family, it never gets old. Not even year after year. The site, which features a new personalized, animated card each year, complete with dancing elves that bare the faces of your friends and family members dancing to funk, hip hop, disco and other music genres, made it cool to “Go Elf yourself!” and send the video to friends.
This year, the digital entertainment company also released “2011, Buh-Bye!” a video that follows the same humorous greeting captured in the original elf videos but that sadly, does not allow you to upload a picture. “2011, Buh-Bye!” features a parody of the year’s highlights including Charlie Sheen, Amy Winehouse and Steve Jobs.
Since 2007, when JibJab first presented the dancing elves animated card, it has basically ruled over the holiday e-card market with nearly 200 million cards made to date. But this season, different e-greeting cards have surfaced on the market. Take for example the American Idol cards. These greetings allow you to join returning judges Jennifer Lopez, Steven Tyler, and Randy Jackson along with host Ryan Seacrest by superimposing your image in a group picture of the team. You can also upload your image to any of the other two designs which have American Idol greetings such as “Jingle Bell Rock this Season with American Idol” and “I’m Dreamin’ of an American Idol Christmas”. Although it’s nice to see yourself as part of the American Idol elite at least through the superimposed image, these greetings are not animated or nearly as entertaining as JibJab’s dancing elves.
Another great selection however, are the greetings made available through Skype. Similar to the portal’s “Say it with Skype” Happy Birthdays greetings, these holiday videos also feature some of your favorite performers singing, but in this case its classic Christmas songs such as “Merry Christmas”, “Silent Night”, and “Deck the Halls” on the bill. The best part of these video greetings is that they feature some of the most un-Christmas-like personalities such as Alice Cooper. But as unique as Cooper singing “We wish you a merry Christmas” is, it would be nice to see him perform his own rendition of the classic Christmas song. Now that is a sight to see.
So perhaps for next year, the brains behind these three e-greeting cards can get together by a fireplace and over a cup of eggnog come up with a service that allows you to easily superimpose an image over a video that features some of your favorite singers performing improvised Christmas classics. Until then and for now, all you have to decide is who will rock your holiday season more this year: dancing elves, J.Lo or Alice Cooper.
