Posterous (YC summer 08) Beats Tumblr In Simplicity | Hacker News Reader

Posterous (YC summer 08) Beats Tumblr In Simplicity

techcrunch.com

81 pointsptm32 comments

Thanks for the support from EVERYONE, YC, Hacker News, and all our friends. We're hoping to get better every day, and you guys are such an instrumental part of that.

As for the fake posts, we're patching those bugs up as we speak!

/gratz on your release and good luck to Posterous

Feedback:

1. It's not simpler, engaging a series of emails (if you want to have a Posterous address other than something like xY4.zgBX) is not as easy as 1-click.

2. You can post by email to Tumblr — photos too.

3. Missing custom CSS, or even option to select a different theme and/or color scheme is a big deficit.

4. Engaging in comment threads through email seems more annoying than Jar Jar.

No. Posterous is really cool and I think it will be a big hit, but sending an email is not simpler than using the Tumblr bookmarklet, which makes blogging practically unconscious.

Oh the bookmarklet is coming. Oh yes, the bookmarklet is coming. ;-)

it certainly is a very, very convenient way to create a new account.

convenient?

if someone is not already logged in their email, they have to type an address and then login. Is that easier from having a simple username/password signup page?

Not everyone uses webmail. Also, it's a lot easier from a mobile device. Also, we hate using web forms because they're such a pain. I hate seeing a Browse button! Now I can drag and drop right into Thunderbird.

Also: if you can use email, you can use posterous. This opens it up to a lot more people who are afraid of "setting up" and remembering another password and confusing web interface.

it's a nice feature but I assume your audience is also mainstream users.

So, those people who are not technical users, most probably use webmail. Even, if they do have another address (from their university) they would still probably login from the web or prefer not to use that address but that of their IM.

just my thoughts..

I think you're being too optimistic about the number of non technical people that will use this service. For them to do so would require them to understand what blogging is, why they would want to keep a blog and how simply mailing your posts is an improvement over typing something into a web form. Posterous is a fantastic idea (IMO anyway) but I doubt this will happen anytime soon.

I'm guessing your audience will be tech savvy users who understand why publishing some conversations online using a tool you're already using anyway (email) is a good idea.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

Any plans to support OpenID as well?

The tumblr bookmarklet seems to require some manual manipulation if you want to order content in the order it was presented on the page you are bookmarking.

I hope that the posterous bookmarklet is good at keeping the layout of the things I select.

Posterous is a great tool. I don't think Arrington went into enough detail about how well it organizes content you send via email-- you can pretty much send any combination of things, and it automatically turns it into beautifully presented content. The photo viewer for multiple photos, the audio player, etc, are very well thought out.

From the few awesome features they have now, it's obvious these guys "get it;" I can't wait to see what they add next.

Posterous has replaced my Tumblr.

Post text, photos, MP3s, or videos (if you have Vimeo enabled) directly from your mobile phone. You can use the Subject line to attach a caption to photos.

- http://www.tumblr.com/goodies

Tumblr does need a solution for multiple photos though. Joining a whole new service is probably not the solution, for me at least.

Also, when I used the audio player on the TechCrunch post the interface was pretty unintuitive. There is a huge play button that remains as a play button. To pause it you press the pause or stop buttons, which are available when its not even playing. Generally, the pause button replaces the play button once it is playing. The play button isn't even a toggle, despite the fact it stays pressed in you can't press it press to toggle it back up?

The audio player is definitely something we're working on. Expect good things soon.

The MySpace audio player is pretty good. It gives you the name, upcoming songs, volume control, etc. all of which are missing from this.

Really cool, love how it formatted everything- looks phenomenal.

Email registration is really awkward, though- I get redirected to Gmail to send a post, then from there to the site to set a account name and password, which I would have done in the beginning with a normal registration process.

Seems like it'd be way, way more straightforward to signup with username/password/domain, and then do the first post as email confirmation. IE "Hey, thanks for signing up for Posterous! To confirm your account and make your first post just reply to this email and attach a picture, mp3, video, or text post- we'll format it and it'll look awesome :) Give it a try!"

In our tests, what we've found is that instead people see "sign up now" and think "oh crap, another boring form I have to fill out. Yet another password to remember. BACK, BACK, BACK.

This takes the idea of no-signup try-it-out to the next step. It's the worst thing in the world to ask questions about a user before you show them what you've got going on.

Scratch that then, the stats are the stats :)

Don't know if you're up to share the information, but what was the difference in conversion rates? Really interested in how big of a difference there was between the two. Also, what is the difference in time on site of new users between the two signup methods? Retention stay about the same?

we’ll give a free TechCrunch Tshirt to the first person who manages to do a fake post on our Posterous blog

Look's like there are already two fake posts: http://techcrunch.posterous.com/ using http://deadfake.com

Shouldn't be hard to fix that - they just need to keep track of the originating SMTP server of the first e-mail.

Since many large email providers use clusters of smtp servers, it's probably better to try to use SPF records or Domain Keys signing leaving the originating smtp server as a latter resort. Even reverse dns lookups might be partly helpful but if someone controls the ip they could change that easily...

Interesting problem over. I love the service though. Congrats guys!

And what happens if you use gmail or any other large email host?

How will you get <fake>@gmail.com?

I wouldn't be surprised if there are large hosts that don't check for spoofed "from" addresses. Maybe not Gmail, but I haven't checked.

The nice thing about this application is that if one does not write for a while they can simply email "Where have you been? What's new?" and the user is very likely to hit REPLY. The rest of the story is that your answer is turned into a new post.

Love it: http://ivankirigin.posterous.com

While we're sharing, here's mine. Add me, add me! =)

http://garry.posterous.com

Nice concept, love that it challenges assumptions about the lowest possible barriers to posting.

I don't agree with the comments here and on TechCrunch about it allowing people who don't understand how to blog to create an account. Those same people are pretty unlikely to even have an email account in the first place.

I know plenty of people who use email regularly but claim ignorance as to what a blog is. In fact, I'm related to a few. My guess is that I could get them up and running with Posterous pretty quickly.

Yeah, of course every person isn't like that. It's still true that the majority of people simply do not care about sharing what they do online, no matter what it's called or how they register for it.

Great concept but missing the most important piece of the puzzle:

THEMES!

That's what got wordpress it's place.

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