Posterous - Beacon of Data Portability | Hacker News Reader

Posterous - Beacon of Data Portability

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23 pointstechtruth27 comments

For the record: Posterous API allows 100% access to your data on Posterous. Users own their content and are free to move. -Sachin Agarwal (http://bit.ly/9MYzfP)

What hypocrisy?

Can normal users know how to use this API? Why don't you give a button which says export my posts to a text file or something else.

and what will a normal user do with that text file?

We find it much more effective to have an API that other people (like you) can use to write an exporter to whatever other service they wish.

Maybe you should just write a Posterous exporter using our API, instead of complaining. Just let me know if you need any help!

thanks

Because what are you going to import that file into? Everything needs a custom import format. Making the API available makes it easy for someone to write something that exports to the format needed. Do you think Posterous should host a different file that allows easy importing for all of its competitors? If the competitors care, they can make a tool that imports into the format they desire. Likewise, if a user just wants a text file of their contributions, they are free to obtain one. Someone could write these tools and publish them, but it's a little over the top to expect Posterous to write an exporter for everyone else's custom formats.

thanks! well said.

Calling this "hypocrisy" is way overblown.

When they block and threaten legal action against a company for writing a custom "importer" to pull content from Posterous - then you have hypocrisy.

For those tuning in recently, the original title of this post was "Posterous Hypocrisy".

Anyone notice that the content of this tumblr is two anti-posterous posts both of which have been posted to hacker news by 2 news accounts, 'techtruth' and 'techfact'?

Smells like astroturfing to me.

As far as I'm aware, Posterous has done nothing to actively discourage migration of information away from their service, and they certainly haven't threatened legal action on anyone for moving their online information around.

I am simply asking Posterous to take moral high ground. Give a feature where people can export their posts in standard data formats. then go ahead and target your competitors.

You can easily get all the data from XML feeds. Or you can use their API to get all the data out through XML or JSON. Both are standard formats. I am pretty sure no one offers a export my data function. Not even Tumblr.

I dont know about Tumblr. but wordpress & livejournal supports metaweblog i think. may be tumblr should support it as well.

Posterous supports XML/JSON but that's not good enough for you since they don't support metaweblog. While we are at it, I would want Posterous to support .txt, .ini, .html, NewsML and any other plethora of the formats that exists.

Your argument is flawed and you are changing your base premise when called out.

techtruth, we do offer your data in standard formats: XML through our API. See:

http://posterous.com/api/reading

What exactly are you looking for? We're open to suggestions and will gladly expand our API to keep Posterous open and flexible.

There's no hypocrisy here. Our goal is to let users move into and out of posterous at will, and use whatever service they find to be best.

Thanks!

I was actually considering making such a tool, because I'm pretty sure that I'm moving away from Posterous in the near future.

I'm sure if I do, I'll put it up on GitHub. The biggest concern I have is not only getting the content of posts, but being able to make a .htaccess with redirects so that I don't lose my google juice.

Just wondering, why are you leaving Posterous, and to what do you want to switch?

Overall, I like Posterous. It's easy to post stuff, most of the default skins look nice...

But at the same time, I'm a programmer. I love to tinker. I'd much rather have something that runs on my own server, and lets me do whatever. There's a few widgets and things I'd like to add, or at least experiment with. I can't do that with Posterous.

Additionally, the whole affiliate link thing left a bad taste in my mouth. If I already hadn't been considering switching, it probably wouldn't have been enough, but it moved my thinking from "maybe I'll switch someday" to "I'm going to switch someday."

One of the reasons I haven't switched yet is that I don't feel there's a clear winner in the blogging space. I like Tumblr's look and feel, but that doesn't solve my portability or customizability concerns. I'm trying to fight the urge to start typing 'rails g post title:string body:text' because I really don't have the time to do all of that... I've been thinking about trying Wordpress 3, but with it's security history, I'm a little shaky. I used to use Jekyll, and enjoyed it, so that might also be where I go.

Deleted comment

Why not metaweblog api? Posterous has api for only posting data. I have not seen one to fetch. If you are the best kid in town why do you need to be afraid of others?

If Posterous is open about data portability, customers will be happy as well.

If Posterous wants to be a STAND UP company, they'll post information and a tool(not just XML or API) on how to migrate away FROM Posterous. Then they can go and write importers for other sites.

I'm sick of all these companies talking shit but not being able to back it up when they say they're looking out for the user!

Ok here you go:

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/posterous-importer/

There's information and a direct link to a plugin that lets you export your site out of Posterous to Wordpress.

We think we're a better service than they are, but we aren't afraid of data portability. Users can switch as much as they want and choose the best service

Why don't you mention this in any of your announcements? It'd be worth mentioning to people that not only can you import their information from X service, but if they try it and don't like it you can upload any changes to their old service? That would reduce potential customers fears of data lock-in and give them another reason to try Posterous?

Whoa, let's calm down and think rationally here.

Is it really a web app company's responsibility to actually write importers for competitors? It's certainly a responsible practice to document the API well, but you're basically asking for your landlord to pay for your moving van when you move out.

Well if they're truly going to back data portability then writing data importers for competitors would not only be true to the ideal, it would be a ballsy move!

well said

Convinced. Thanks for clarifying your side of story. Characterizing other platforms as dead kind of tickled me. sorry.

Freedom of speech allows them to do so. It's up to the users to decide if there is any merits in their claim.

If you were defending tumblr or trying to make posterous look bad, I don't think you did any good here.

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