If I was CEO of Posterous | Hacker News Reader

If I was CEO of Posterous

tawheedkader.com

40 pointsTawheed25 comments

And that is why TK isn't the CEO. The whole campaign is really smart and well executed.

On the PR front it is generating huge buzz. On the business side it makes perfect sense - expand the market from people who want to start a new blog to also include people who already have blogs.

Just to be clear, I think the campaign is really smart as well. But, my article has nothing to do with that -- my article talks about what the bigger vision around Posterous is (i.e whether they should strive to be yet another blogging platform or try to take a different approach to revolutionize personal publishing)

// I made this clearer in the post.

Posterous is blogging that just f'n works. My mom uses it and it suits her great. Wordpress was just a bit much for her. The support is great too. I actually got a kick when she said: "That nice fella Gary helped me out". Wordpress rocks too, but they're different things. I feel like there are a lot of people out there using Wordpress that would love something simpler like what Posterous offers, but just don't know it's there. If I were CEO of Posterous, I would be doing the same exact thing.

This agrees with the OP. As I understand it, he's basically saying "don't go after people who have blogs and convert them, go after people who would start a blog if it wasn't so complicated".

I strongly disagree with this opinion.

First, the reason that people make big money coming up with custom solutions for Wordpress is because its a lot of work to get things to the state of "exactly what the client wants". It would be a distraction and a waste of time to pursue the creation of many "starter" niches. I find it kind of ironic that the author suggests that they step back and take a look at the forest while suggesting they take a more myopic view of Posterous as a business. The reason Posterous isn't a blog consulting company is the same reason Facebook isn't a gaming company but is rather a platform for gaming companies (and many other things).

Second, it doesn't fit into the goal of Posterous as a company which from my external perspective appears to be making blogging stupidly easy and accessible for anyone.

Third, scale first. Its easy to attack verticals later once you already own the space (in this case blogging).

It's "If I were the CEO of Posterous."

Sorry to be the grammar pedant, but this one always bugs me.

Although this bugs me too, it's not incorrect. It's perfectly understandable in American English, and "correct" in other varieties of English.

They mean different things, no? If I were CEO, I'd do things differently. If I was CEO, I don't remember it.

I'd say you'd have a bright future as a copy editor waiting for you if you desired, but I don't think there are any bright futures left in publishing.

What about that big furnace up ahead? Seems pretty bright from here. It's getting nearer/brighter all the time, too!

Yes, they do, it's the "subjunctive":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood

And it's one of those cases where knowing a foreign language can help you think about English a bit more clearly. It's mostly vestigial in English (which is why "if I was rich" is so common), but in a language like Italian, it's much more widely used (I think that ..., I believe that ..., I want ... and similar sentiments all require that you use the subjunctive), and it has obviously different verb forms: "penso che sia" instead of "penso che e`". It appears from that wikipedia article that Spanish is similar.

You're right, we are dealing with two different moods. I'd argue that in this case the clause is subjunctive (contrary to fact) rendered with the indicative mood. This is increasingly common, and in many dialects standard. The question then is: do people really mean this in a "subjunctive way" or if the mood has disappeared entirely?

In the UK this makes perfect sense. (thinking about it I would probably us "were" but a lot of my generation would use "was")

yeah, it's more den correct in Jamaica, maan! ;-)

Considering how often we hear about WordPress sites getting hacked, this campaign may really hit home for a large number of bloggers.

I can't believe that all these companies don't make it easier to import. A really (but really) great Wordpress importer must surely make your service attractive to the millions of WP'ers out there? Writing importers for similar services is a great idea if you want to grow.

Actually they do. Most every blog service has both an import and and export, and even though the resulting XML isn't formatted identically, usually an export from any major service will import successfully into any other major service.

FWIW: I've done imports between blogspot, movable type, and wordpress a number of times with rarely a problem.

I suppose it's sort of diabolically evil of Posterous here. They're really just releasing a feature every other blogging service has had for years, but doing it in a way that's great PR.

John Mayer's said that Twitter's out and Tumblr's in. http://www.geekosystem.com/john-mayer-twitter-tumblr/

Ashton Kutcher's supposedly "directly responsible" for http://nowmov.com existing. (cross between Chatroulette interface and a Tweetmeme for YouTube videos.) http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/07/yc-funded-nowmov-sit-back-r...

If I were Posterous, I'd create a Nowmov for Posterous posts, and then go find some high-profile feedback.

edit: the other thing I'd be interested in seeing on Posterous is an easy way to cross post to other people's group blogs, and some incentive to do so. For example, I created a group blog http://hackerbra.in, but there are no users to post to it. However, there are posts by hackers on Posterous that could be submitted to it; the question is how to make that worthwhile? Could it be automatically done, eg I choose some blogs and have the new blog fill up with posts automagically?

I have always felt like Posterous was a solution in search of a problem. I don't have anything against them, I just prefer other platforms better.

Also, I'd love to see some numbers, but I would bet that a far larger number of people post via the web or other methods than do by email, despite that being its original purpose.

Funny - this post and these comments brought me to import my family wordpress blog into posterous and pitch it to my wife. We'll see what she says.

I'm guessing they are not interested in selling to small businesses and professionals; they probably want to sell a high-priced "enterprise version" to corporates and keep it free for the masses. They may possibly make money off the free blogs with some ad network (perhaps they have something cooking there and that's why they don't allow google ads).

</speculation>

What I find most useful about Posterous is how dead simple it is to share media from email for virtually painless hosting! The only way anyone could beat that is to use Dropbox!! <wishful thinking>Now, imagine if you could just post to your blog by putting something in your Dropbox folder. Hmmm, I hope you posterous guys are listening.</wishful thinking>

You can post photos to http://ourdoings.com/ via dropbox. It's a blog-like photo sharing site.

That's like sailing on 10 boats and one will sink :)

10 industries is a lot of work. The idiosyncrasies will kill you. Be as generic as possible.

I say 'Go after Wordpress'

Is this so different than say Apple's "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" advertisements? Posterous believes they have a system which has a lower barrier of entry for users of these other platforms. The only thing different is that they are taking a more direct advertising route than word of mouth, and are using tactics and advertising styles that you usually only see in much larger companies. Good on them for aiming high!

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