Dutch-speaking philatelists can now share their passion with other stamp collectors at the Postzegel blog (“Stamp blog” in English) which launched yesterday.

Sponsored by TPG Post, the Dutch national postal service and part of the global TNT Group, the Postzegel blog is the first blog backed by a large publicly-listed Dutch organization, excluding media blogs. It could even be a first of its type in Europe.

According to Frank Janssen, a consultant to TPG Post, the new blog offers collectors much more than purely a place to engage in conversations:

With the Stampblog, TPG Post wants to keep collectors and those interested informed about all the news on stamps. This will be realised by, amongst others, daily stampnews, an agenda for exhibitions and auctions and also a notice-board on which visitors can place their own advertisements. As far as we are concerned, the stampblog is pre-eminently a blog by and for stamp collectors, a place to exchange news and to get people who share a hobby in contact with each other. Furthermore, the stampblog offers amongst others a version for mobile users of the Internet, a handy search function for the news archive, links to interesting stamp websites and messages, a noticeboard for classified advertisements and theses on which people can respond.

The site offers customizable RSS feeds and other information through the Postzegelklikker (“Stampclicker”), a tool that aggregates multiple information resources in one place.

It looks like a great initiative by TPG Post in supporting a place online that can become a focal point for building community among people with a common interest, while at the same time keeping the TPG Post name front of mind. And, Janssen says, it will enable TPG Post to gain better insight into the ideas and needs of stamp collectors and increase interest in stamp collecting.

If they can do this while keeping at arm’s length (ie, no overt commercial messaging), then this blog has a great chance of long-term success.

Nice work.