Pigspigot is an online, user-generated greeting card company that will allow customers to send both e-cards and snail-mail cards to friends and family. We like to think of it as a sort of anti-Hallmark with a wiki twist.

Browse our collection, using our editor's picks or check out what's "popular" to see the cards people love the most. We offer free e-cards, but try sending a paper card for the insanely low price of 3.99 (including shipping). We're sure your loved ones would love you more if you send them the real deal (and we're pretty sure the converse is true, too; yikes!). Check out our FAQ section for more technical details or contact us with any questions.

Or, if you're feeling clever and art-tastic, submit some cards! You can upload designs that you've created on your computer or you can use our nifty card template. Please do it. Por favor. Because without you, we'd have no cards.

Last year we introduced our "holiday video card," and over a million of you sent fun and festive video cards to your friends and loved ones. This year we're bringing it back with even more themes and featured videos for you to choose from, like this one:

To create your card, visit the YouTube Greeting Cards site where you can choose from dozens of holiday videos uploaded by the YouTube community. Or if you prefer, send a greeting video of your own - either select a video that you've previously uploaded or record a brand new one. For your convenience, we've also added a link on every YouTube watch page under the "share options" section so you can send any embeddable video on YouTube as a greeting card.

After you've selected your video, pick a theme, type in your personal message, enter the recipients' email addresses, and voila - instant holiday cheer.

Keynote said sites that usually load in two or three seconds were taking an average of 12 seconds or longer.

Problems with Web sites not only frustrate customers but also deprive sites of advertising revenue, especially if a visitor doesn't come back to view or send a card.

The Web site for Hallmark Cards Inc. was inaccessible or slow starting about 6 a.m. EST, according to Keynote. It was back to normal by late morning but got slow again around noon - just as people on the West Coast got to work and opened cards that had arrived in their inboxes, said Shawn White, Keynote's director of external operations.

Keynote said it also spotted problems with 123Greetings.com, and The Associated Press found in a test Thursday afternoon that many pages took several seconds to load. But officials at 123Greetings insisted that less than 1 percent of its visitors experienced slowdowns.

"123Greetings.com experienced record traffic today, one of the highest in its history," the company said in a statement. "Problems at other greeting cards sites caused record volumes of users to come over to our site, and we were happy to welcome them all."

Competing for consumers who spend less time browsing to find the perfect card and who increasingly communicate with friends electronically, the two companies - which dominate the $7.5 billion industry - are appealing to women who, according to their research, like humorous takes on their everyday travails. They also purchase 80 percent of all paper greeting cards.

"Women told us that everyday life had funnier situations than anything that is made up," said Beth Murdoch, director of funny cards for American Greetings, who led the company's six-month look at contemporary humor.

By pushing hard on this genre, the card companies hope to promote the idea that greeting cards can be sent anytime, not just on holidays and special occasions. Given how accustomed people have become to sending funny e-mail messages for no particular reason, they may start to view traditional cards in the same light, the logic goes.

While the paper card market is declining, it is still five times as large as the e-card market, according to the Greeting Card Association, a trade group. Ninety percent of United States households still buy paper greeting cards, and the average household buys 30 a year, the association said.