Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust
readwriteweb.com
readwriteweb.com
After checking out Tumblr, it was not clear to me that Posterous was the better product and there were some issues with DDOS attacks at the same time. Also I saw two other people I knew using Tumblr as well.
If Posterous really became the clear-cut best blogging platform someday, I could always switch over with the switch tool, so the decision to use Tumblr for now was an easy one.
I heard about tumblr all these years but never tried it before. Its funny how things work.
I felt pretty sheepish about it, but I never got the impression those guys were any of the things you say here. To each his own!
Posterous is still superior in my opinion, regardless of users or traffic. It's the simplest, most intuitive platform I've used to date. Their source editor is sweet too. If I need to add some links, or change the entire template, I can, very easily... seems like it's user and hacker focused. No clutter, and they give complete control.
I'm not saying Tumblr does not have these traits, frankly, last time I used Tumblr was years ago, but no reason to write an article that assumes there is some kind of "finish line."
"pompous, arrogant, and unnecessarily slagged on their competition" Come on dude! Are they supposed to do it any different? Their "Import/Switch to" campaign was very creative, aggressive, and got a lot of new sign ups. I took notes, instead of complain...
As s product manager, I've worked on switching campaigns before, but the manner in which Posterous chose to do so made me lose all faith in whether they cared about their customers or was it win at all cost.
When I write, I want to be appreciated and I want my writing to reach a big audience. Tumblr achieves that, posterous never made any change in that direction.
Posterous started off cool and fresh, but that initial slew of innovation has not been followed up on. Things like the backtype widget, view count, etc all were there from the start, and later not much new stuff came after that.
Posterous have focused too much on these technical stuff (like CSS buttons), and too little on the social stuff. I write for people to read, not for my page to look good.
Don't get me wrong, I like posterous a lot. But I just think posterous is simple by being limiting.
But I guess, I'm irreleveant.
I don't mean social as in posterous creating their own social network, that would be silly. I just want tighter and deeper integration with social collections, such that what I write can spread wider and be more appreciated.
Being able to embed and image in a post is not a feature I really appreciate much, since I know html and thus can solve it very quickly. But integrating deeply with other social networks is not something I'm familiar with, and having such features would be great for me.
I started using Tumblr to jot down my notes because it looked cool and simple. To my regret, a couple times I found new "social" features on my dashboard, but that's it. I was actually afraid that this hobby project will fade away and shut down, unneeded. I was surprised to find it is not so!
A lot of what makes them popular can only be found on their site. You don't get any engineering vibe from them, they project a very sensitive image that appeals to the heart. By not visiting their site, you are not participating.
I think the posterous offering is not diluted by email posting, and it would at least appear to me to make more sense if more people on posterous use email posting.
I know this is not how or why most people use tumblr. But thats ok. I use it only the way I like it.
I also have a "public" self hosted wordpress blog which I share with my friends and family and open to search engine.
posterous, to me, is just yet another blogging platform. Just like I don't feel like I need to try out every single new things comes out every week, I don't feel like posterous really sets them apart is such a way from all other existing blogging platform for me to even bother.
The Posterous switch campaign awhile back was targeted at users like you. That's how they were trying to set themselves apart. It might not have worked well, but the intention is clear.
There is only so much a utility product can do to diversify itself from competitors. A condom is a condom is a condom. As long as it doesn't leak, it works. Would you complain that Trojan's products are not sufficiently different from Durex?
The reason yor analogy doesn't work is because condoms are single purpose, blogging software and OS are not. They can be and has been able to set them apart from one another with features, implementations, ease of use and services.
This ignores quality, convenience, and the user experience. Not all condoms are the same, and how they are deployed by the user makes all the difference in the world.
And don't throw blogger out if you are adding big blogs.
I like the idea of a YC company taking on an existing one head on once in awhile, rather than looking for an overtly specific niche. Posterous still has a ton of users, and I think at one point and time the digg vs reddit chart looked pretty similar. Look at it today and you will see a different story.
Similar articles were written about Facebook and Twitter and now Twitter is getting 370k new accounts per day. It just takes time.
Personally, I find the social network features of Tumblr really jumbled and confusing as an outsider. LiveJournal was a social network, too, and it plateaued.
For social sites (Twitter, Facebook etc.) it's important because of the network effects but to read and interact with a blog on a particular site you don't need to have a blog on that site yourself (else we'd all still have LiveJournals). That means age or growth doesn't mean too much.
Of course that counts for Tumblr too which means that you've got to look at more standard factors for growth - functionality, cost, brand awareness and so on - and in these areas Tumblr seems to have an advantage which I suspect is why it's growing faster.
Not that that traffic is somehow invalid, but I think it makes the comparison a bit more apples-to-oranges.
A social network's content is its people. I think Tumblr did well targeting the casual crowd. Posterous blogs that I come across, on the other hand, are very "merit-arian," so to speak. Lots of industry focused minds on there that is famous not because of Posterous, but because they are also high in some other circle. In this case, Posterous is only providing them with the tools, with a small Posterous ad attached.
I wouldn't want to see them sacrificing that just to beat Tumblr.
Without this kind of context, raw traffic is kinda meaningless. At least the quantcast numbers for both are directly measured and not "estimated".
Sadly I think posterous's name is quite bad. It sounds like a developer came up with it (no offense guys), it doesn't roll off the tongue and it sounds intimidating.
These are just my hunches, no data at all to back any of this up, but I do feel like the right name can make a difference.
Both apps are great, Posterous webservices integration beats Tumblr, but the latter wins in terms of 'hanging around' browsing stuff from the community and that's probably the key point of their success in stats.
Treat yourself to a pretty theme:
http://www.tumblr.com/themes/premium
ahem
I know people get worked up about new stuff, but that doesn't mean the new stuff is better than the old (often far more reliable, featureful, etc. etc). I went with wordpress.com a couple months ago, and have loved it (with email posting and excellent code highlighting, even for Clojure :-P).
Eyeballs are good, but revenue is better.
For very linear implementations of exp()
I prefer and use Posterous; but somehow Tumblr seems to be much more beautiful; more Apple-ish. Posterous sites seems more serious.
http://www.google.com/search?q=exclude+yourself+from+google+...
Also, since I often see this mentioned as a difference, does Posterous do something to block porn (however strictly)?
I suppose my real question is "Sure, Tumblr has a lock on the porn market right now, but why?"
I guess you could argue erotica isn't porn, but yes, they like it. The notion actually extends beyond sexually explicit material, as many popular tumblelogs in the directory has porn or something that alludes to porn in their title even though they have nothing to do with sex.
I'm a big fan of Posterous but the social edge on Tumblr means more traffic and exposure for the blog which what attracts and keeps people on the platform.