Posterous: The next "big" thing? | Hacker News Reader

Posterous: The next "big" thing?

reuters.com

46 pointsquizbiz33 comments

I think posterous is really good for what it is now.

However he talks about how they raised a few million dollars, don't make any money now, but they're going to make a "pro" version for companies who need to monazite their blog and charge for it. As long as self hosted Wordpress is available I don't know why I'd ever want my "monatized" blog hosted on posterous where it would disappear and stop working if I ever stopped paying them. If I'm earning a livelihood from blogging I'm sure as hell not going to let it's fate potentially rest in the whims of Posterous.

Think about the millions of businesses out there who need a website, and want to be on Twitter and Facebook. Most of these people have no clue how to setup a self hosted wordpress site. And even if they knew how, don't have the time to do it.

For these people, paying for a hosted website is well worth it.

What about putting an ad on Craigslist asking a freelancer to set up Wordpress and install the plugins to integrate it to Twitter and Facebook? That can be done in literally a day (longer for a custom theme), and for about $500-$1000.

That sounds like a lot of work, to be honest.

wordpress.com? (or tumblr.com or...)

"Pro" users who are monetizing their blog should be able to figure out how to set up a self hosted Wordpress blog or hire someone to do it cheaply. It a business expense and is well worth it.

For companies who just need a blog to communicate with their customers, then a standard posterous account should be fine, and they don't need to pay for "pro" features.

The one thing that is difficult for people is setting up a self hosted WP blog. Us here, myself, and other tech people know how it is done; however, most people don't know the ins and outs (let's be honest, SQL isn't brain surgery).

Posterous will absolutely corner the market for socially aware businesses who want a one click solution to their blog / twitter / friendfeed / etc. I currently work in the Social Media space and I wish my clients had the foresight to jump on such a dead simple blogging platform. The export issue really isn't much of a problem either, set up a blog in tumblr or a hosted WP solution and just export it all there.

I always pronounced it poe-ster-ous and not pah-ster-ous. oops

Your way makes more sense. You use it to post things and it isn't preposterous.

They need to fix the pronunciation.

Of course, It's completely counter-intuitive to pronounce it pah-ster-ous. Especially for an email to post blogging platform.

I've always read it pah-steer-eee-us. I know that's wrong but the word has always looked like posterior to me. Fun service though.

I was excited about Posterous, tried it out, and switched back to Tumblr.

Posterous did a good job with their email integration but to be honest I don't think most people want to update their blog with their email client.

Posterous really needs a UI/UX person. They are focusing too much on features. The basic flow of the site is confusing and IMO, the design is ugly.

Tumblr gets the evolution of blogs better than anyone out there. Most people want something in between wordpress and twitter. The "longform" blogs are starting to devolve into a weird ecosystem of stay at home moms and marketers who are trying to make money gaming google ads. I guess someone needs to serve this space, but it seems pretty 2nd rate and Wordpress already has it covered.

Short quotes, clips and photos are fun and where it's at. I'd be gunning for Tumblr before Wordpress. They do as good of a job for longer posts as anyone, anyway...

Thanks for your suggestions. We're working hard to get better every day. There is obviously a lot of work left for us to do, but that's what helps us jump out of bed every morning.

I agree short quotes, clips and photos are fun. But it's not where "it's at." I think Twitter already won that battle.

I disagree completely with your description of longform blogs. You're focusing on what's cool at the cost of what is essential.

What's essential?

Sorry, I probably meant novel. What's novel vs. what is actually useful.

Self expression is useful, and it comes in all forms.

Cool quotes and funny photos are the social-media version of PowerPoint -- a limiting medium that squelches higher bandwidth idea transfer.

i think tumblr is better for "sharing rich media"

I don't think it's "better" per se but rather more tailored toward a different group of people. Each one has their pros.

That said, Tumblr's features seems to be a subset of posterous these days. I am a big tumblr user, but I ended to migrating to Posterous for it's much less work for even greater sharing power.

Maybe my use case is weird, but I found Posterous annoying. I tried to use it over and over and every time I hit some weird limitation that kept me from doing what I wanted.

The final straw was posting code. Tumblr makes that stupid easy (since they accept Markdown), so I can just do that instead of trying to figure out the magic incantation to make it work on Posterous (gists or something? I don't know. It wasn't documented when I last tried).

Did you know we support embedding Github Gists? Just paste the gist URL and we do the rest.

Markdown etc has been a much-wanted feature, even for ourselves internally. We try to focus on normals as much as possible, so it hasn't hit the top of our priority list yet, but it has been rising in the list without a doubt.

Right. I suppose Sachin has to say that Posterous is for everyone, but it's really not. Those who want to socially share within a walled community will continue to use Facebook. Those who want to curate their media online without as much context will continue use Picasa, Flickr, and the others. So Posterous' niche will involve some mix of people in between, I think.

I will say though that their service is dead simple to use. But then again the Facebook and Flickr exporters are pretty easy to use, too.

Tumblr is a microblog. Posterous is a full blog + website creator that doesn't have to impose artificial limitations and post types in order to be simple.

Exactly what artificial limitations are you referring to? Tumblr has an extensive theme engine, even a marketplace to sell those themes, a developer API, and an outstanding tumblr discovery system.

I don't seen anything artificial or limiting about any of that.

one photo per post, 5 minutes per video, one audio file per week. can't mix media in a single post.

Our goals for Posterous are just totally different than what Tumblr is going for. We're aiming for Wordpress.com, not a microblog.

So I take it you represent Posterous, since you use 'we'.

You should know, you can create photo sets with tumblr, allowing multiple images. i.e. more than just one.

One audio file per week hasn't been around since ver. 1 of tumblr. I'm not exactly sure where you're drawing your talking points, but they're simply...incorrect.

He's the guy in the video.

I don't know if I'd call it "artificial" exactly, but last time I checked, Posterous was limited by how big of an email you can send (gmail limits to 20 or 25 mb, I think). Have they opened up on-site uploads yet?

yep, new web editor that allows uploads and editing of all posts.

cool! that was one of my original hangups, if i can call it that.

Having themes and a customizable header image doesn't make it a "full website creator".

Posterous has some nice features but its place in the market seems a little undefined. It's more than Tumblr and less than Wordpress.com, which with the widgets available for hosted sites can do pretty much everything Posterous does (if at times in a less attractive way) and quite a bit more.

What about the new pages feature tumblr just rolled out in the last few weeks, it even lets you define a mobile specific stylesheet without having to use JS and detect the browser..

What's with the title? Nowhere is anybody suggesting Posterous is gonna be 'the next "big" thing'.

Also, I'm really impressed with the quality of Reuters video product.

I thought the YC backed firm would appreciate them being implied as 'the next "big" thing' by Reuters: http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/1013/screenshot20100427at... Screen shot from the homepage, www.reuters.com.

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