Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikebo | Hacker News Reader

From their acquisition FAQ: "We’ll give you ample notice before any changes to the service and we’ll share clear instructions about how to move your content to other services. In the meantime, your Spaces will remain up and running without disruption."

Sounds like posterous is not long for this world. This is a bummer, I really like posterous.

View on HN

I wonder what will happen to YC's posterous[1]. Pg usually twits all that info, but it was nice to have a less ephemeral source of info.

[1] http://ycombinator.posterous.com/

I guess it's a good thing to have someone in this situation on the inside who can voice his concern to the (former) owners about this.

The line immediately before that in the blog is "Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption."

Sounds more like they're answering a potentially frequently answered question, not hinting that they'll be shutting the service.

Reading between the lines in the article and the FAQ it seems this indeed will happen:

http://posterous.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/56001-...

> What happens to my Space? Will Posterous eventually shut down?

> You can use your Space(s) exactly as you have in the past. We’ll give you ample notice before any changes or disruptions to the service and we’ll provide specific instructions for exporting your content to another service.

Notice they don't actually answer the question.

http://blog.twitter.com/2012/03/welcoming-posterous-team-to-...

> Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better.

Sounds like they'll be working on Twitter, not Posterous. It doesn't say anything about people at Twitter working at Posterous, so it doesn't sound like a merge.

They can't exactly promise to remain up forever. That's not in their control post-acquisition.

There's a big difference between "Um... ah... we'll tell you before we delete everything" and "We've received assurances from Twitter that they intend to support the project for the foreseeable future", though.

Yes, but if they haven't received those assurances, there's no benefit in highlighting the fact (for either the users or Posterous), and much potential harm if users spook and Twitter later decides to continue supporting it.

They would have just been through a negotiation process for acquisition. Of they didn't seek out assurances or none were given I find it highly unlikely there will be any result but a shutdown. If twitter was interested in posterous the product, it would have been front and center in the announcement.

The last question of the FAQ is this:

>Can I export my Space’s to Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger, or >another service?

>Over the coming weeks we’ll provide you with specific >instructions for exporting your content to other services.

I don't think there is any doubt they'll be shutting down Spaces soon.

Somewhat ironic given the big campaign they ran trying to get people to switch to them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com