NumBytes 7: Catalog Craze

With all the e-hype about selling via company websites, auction sites, and social networks, you'd think that catalogs sent via snail mail would have gone the way of the buggy whip and pay phone. Not yet. According to US Census statistics, in 2009: mail order catalogs accounted for $121.9 billion in total sales versus $112.8 billion in e-commerce sales. And that was a down year. Last year, merchants mailed out 20 billion -- that's billion with a "B" -- catalogs.

But did you ever notice that if you order from one catalog, you get lots more in the mail? That's because merchants share your name and address and probably bits and bytes of data mined from the internet with each other -- more than 1100 brands share mailing lists. No wonder the United States Postal Service delivers 40% of the world's mail.