Ask HN: Is Posterous too Ambitious (specifically: Flickr) | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Posterous too Ambitious (specifically: Flickr)

5 pointsebun9 comments

I know there's been some discussion regarding Posterous and their recent aggressive user acquisition strategy. I'm not knocking them on trying to get converts from other blogging platforms but Flickr? That seems a tad bit TOO ambitious.

http://blog.posterous.com/turn-a-flickr-into-a-flame-move-your-photos-t

What do you guys think?

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I don't think so. Flickr is great for a lot of people, but is great for everyone that currently uses it? No. It doesn't have the personal touch that a tumblr type site has nor the flexibility. Plus you are locked in (I haven't used Flickr in a long time, but maybe it is more open now?) with it.

Posterous and Tumblr (my favorite of the two) have made blogs about as easy as using Twitter (or Facebook) and there is a lot of market for them to go after.

How are you locked in? They had one of the first APIs where you can access your data..

Say you have a pro account for larger photo sizes, and then your pro account expires. Neither you (or anyone else ) can access photos that you uploaded at their original sizes anymore. You're limited to 1024x768. The only way to get the original sized photos back is to get another pro account.

That's not called lock-in, that's just service. Lock-in would be if they didn't provide an easy way to get your data off, forcing you to continue to use flickr (you're locked in). But they provide a clean API for you to do just that. There are lots of tools you can use to pull your data off easily.

Why not? I think Posterous is right to go for everyone (just about) and as a user I appreciate that.

I wish TweetDeck had posterous support :( and I wish there was better integration into my Android world.

Honest question: What is the revenue source for Posterous? If I move all my content to it (or Tumbler, for that matter) what will happen to my content when they go down?

I don't see anything too wrong with their approach. It's basically:

heads I win, tails I don't lose much.

Good point. Kinda like what Google does...with everything.

But what's next on their agenda? Other photo hosting sites? Youtube/Vimeo/etc for video hosting?

I don't know if Posterous wants to get into the business of becoming a mass video repository just yet... but they have quick-embed support for YouTube links, and I could see it as a natural extension if they tried to supplant the YouTube channel functionality in some ways.

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