Posterous takes on Tumblr
blog.posterous.com
blog.posterous.com
Considering:
* Most tumblr themes have Disqus integration, and the "tumblr way" to comment is via reblog.
* Multiple people can contribute to Tumblr blogs, I can also submit posts even if I'm not a user, and ask the authors questions (formspring style)
* I can also password protect my Tumblr.
They also missed the giant Tumblr plus - the community.
Also, given that Posterous bootstrapped their themes from the Tumblr theme community stabbing Tumblr in the back is hardly cool. To clarify, I mean this: http://www.nbrightside.com/blog/2009/09/18/posterous-leverag...
For a company as cool as Posterous I have no idea why they're resorting to such shammy PR.
Competing is not a low blow and it's not stabbing anyone in the back. They aren't saying "Tumblr SUCKS", they are saying "We're different, here's how, come give us a shot".
> But blogging on Tumblr is sort of like being in high school. You have a lot of friends. You can navigate all the different cliques. You're comfortable. But you know deep-down that you can't be in high school forever. Eventually, you have to move on.
Posterous saying "tumblr doesn't support multiple contributors for a blog" when it does - what do you call that?
Also, the themes that we build into our service are 100% licensed via partnership with the theme designers.
Attacking the ability to use Tumblr themes in Posterous is absurd. It's like saying Google Apps isn't allowed to open Microsoft Word documents.
I simply meant they lent on the pre existing tumblr community to boost their own offerings - which was genius.
I do think to do that, and for Tumblr to nod or whatever, and then to do this, seems, IMHO a mis-step.
We gradually added the best themes that we liked the most, some of them were Tumblr themes, and others were created by Posterous users, e.g. http://corywatilo.com
It looks like pclark is providing feedback of some kind to a product represented by rantfoil, who is responding.
I have no opinion about the issues being discussed in this thread, in fact I'm not sure I even understand many of them. But this much I do understand...
rantfoil, you appear to be arguing in a public forum. Don't. By definition, you can't win.
You responses may be perfectly valid (who knows), but language like
I have a major bone to pick with your characterization of Posterous themes.
I hardly think the theme community is unhappy about...
Attacking...is absurd...
make you and all that you represent appear confrontational.
It doesn't matter who wins this battle, rantfoil will lose the war if this is the public perception of the corporate face. Find a way to address this feedback that will attract innocent bystanders, not scare them away.
Mea culpa. Edw, you're right. Pclark, thanks for the feedback.
Hehehe...
Tumblr is actually kicking Posterous' ass in term of UI and ease of use I think. I definitely prefer Tumblr after trying both for a few weeks. This post isn't helping.
Their growth curves show a different story also (I take compete graphs with a grain of salt, but at these traffic volumes it's probably safe to say the overall trend is correct).
Similarly, Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform -- people are on it because they precisely DO NOT want a full blog. I remember Posterous founders specifically saying they don't want to be compared because Posterous is not that (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680087), why go after these people now?
Wordpress? So far, all they've been doing are incorporating features that Wordpress already has and not really changing the experience all that much either... which then begs the question, what's the big goal and how is it different?
It seems to me that their moves align with getting on AS MANY USERS AS POSSIBLE -- and if that means attacking all peripherally similar services, then so be it. It seems that their only goal is a large exit due to a large user base, not really product vision.
I see a couple of takeaways here for fellow hackers and Posterous:
- Really think about what your product is and what your big vision is. Are you really just creating yet another Wordpress.com?
- Is it the post by email that is the uniquely awesome thing about Posterous? Someone should put together a universal "Post by Email" service and test this theory. Have it connect to Wordpress.com and Tumblr and see if people buy.
Create a 'starter' blog that has the right bells and whistles for each of these individual targets:
1. A startup looking to promote their story (have it pre-set with a "About Us" page, a sidebar section to explain their product(s) and what they do, and Twitter/Like buttons to promote the posts
2. An author looking to promote his/her (e)book. Have an "About the Author" section, have excerpts/reviews on the sidebar, and a way to profile sample chapters as blog entries along with a super easy big call to action for buying the book from amazon.
3. A small business trying to attract locals. Have a clear display on the sidebar for location, maps, hours, and phone number. Have a section showing off pictures of the business. Have custom post types for Sales, Events, and special SEO sauce optimized for the given zip code.
(you get the idea...)
With an offering like this, not only will you solve a real problem (people like these having to create and customize these sites from scratch AND having to figure out what the right things to show are -- even though its well known), you 'll be solving a problem that people are willing to pay for.
Posterous is already inferior to Tumblr technically, aesthetically and in many other regards, and now they can add morally to the laundry list.
Just received an email from Tumblr explicitly saying they don't. If I could delete the comment I would (but HN doesn't allow that), but I'll let this stand as my mistake and I'll back out from the Eastside-Westside tech battle.
I can't recommend people post their longer form content and media on platforms that have an opaque path to generating revenue.
I do recommend that they have someone create a self-hosted open source platform for sharing their content online.
The custom post types that have finally arrived in WordPress 3.0 allow people to create their own mini-Tumblrs on their self-hosted website.
I feel that if someone works hard enough to create their own content then they should give some serious thought to their publishing platform too.
I belong in the group of people who have yet to be convinced of the financial stability of Tumblr, but its free hosting, great themes and ways to get exposure using the platform in combination with Fusion, Deck and other ads is very attractive; you would not risk any economical loss using Tumblr.
To be fair to Tumblr, most of the people using the service don't seem to blog with writing content with staying value in mind; you could argue that the microblogging serves as a Zeitgeist echochamber similar to what Twitter can be in some instances.
I don't think that post is going to convert anyone who didn't want to convert already. Lack of comments on tumblr is a feature*. Like, how is 'ability to moderate them' also a feature? More like a hellish burden given down by a cruel god from on high.
Edit: Self-plug My new blog http://blogriot.com/. No comments, no sidebars, no distraction. Just me and my writing. Well, not much writing just set it up few days ago. I had the domain unused for few years so I thought, what the hey! why not use it?
Do the Posterous guys work in 800x600 or something?
They should make it easy to import my entire dashboard. They could also turn the Posterous dashboard into an rss reader. That would be incredibly useful.
Reblooging is better than comment moderation administrivia.
It's sort of like when someone uses the word “skinning” in reference to UX. I just immediately know to disregard everything they say as a total waste of time.
I imagine that there is a way to prevent the "post via email" hack demonstrated last week but I haven't seen an official response from Posterous (they could send me an email?) which says to me that they don't take the threat seriously.
I enjoyed having Posterous feed my entire online presence (twitter, facebook, etc.) but I turned this all off in the wake of the exploit.
I'm sure there is a way to "fix" this, but I don't have time to try and figure it out myself; so it's easier to just turn it off until Posterous has time to tell me how to do it.
Now we have this marketing campaign and a "we're the greatest" and "we can do everything" attitude; it feels very "going Facebook" to me...
I think it's time to go find "the next".
The exploit only involved a limited set of users and was fixed within hours of discovery.
Will be interesting to see which of the easy-blog-tools wins out.
Right now, my bet would be on Tumblr.
They're adding one useless features after another, but that email posting still cannot get even such a basic thing as paragraphs right. Just piles of br's after each line. And they are converting every nonascii character to HTML escape sequences. So after each post, I have to edit unreadable crap full of HTML escapes to put there at least that paragraphs (because otherwise, with larger font sizes, there'd be line break because of whole text-field width and then, after just a word or two, because of those hard breaks in HTML).
On the benefit side, there are things like TypeKit, which seems quite useless to me, as I couldn't find any way to explicitly display only fonts that have Czech diacritics characters, which is essential to me. Facebook like buttons that I don't want… And so on. It's quite tiresome. At first, I liked Posterous because it was easy to setup and worked really well, but I'm getting quite weary of all those, seemingly unimportant, deficiencies.
We're a work in progress like any other. But we're iterating as fast as we can.
But, what's http://marco.org going to say when there are 20 clones of his blog all being indexed by google? It's sort of a kick in the teeth I'd say.
EDIT: I didn't realize tumblr made it so friggin easy to copy an entire blog. My bad.
But here is where Tumblr wins, you can't include any JavaScript in your Posterous theme (http://posterous.com/theming/porting). So if they don't support a feature you want (like comments or TypeKit), you can't add it on your own like you can with Tumblr.
I find soup.io just the perfect tool for me, btw ;)
[edit: one service a day, not week]