This would have been more interesting and innovative a couple years ago, but now that everyone and their mother (and grandmother, and grandfather) are on Facebook, I think Facebook Groups is a fine solution that offers all the features listed here.
I had this exact problem twice in the last month, and both times, I found that everyone in the two real-world groups I was trying to bring online was already on Facebook. Literally every single person out of maybe 50 people total, spanning age ranges from teenagers to folks in their late 50s. I found it much easier to get them to use it than it would have been if I had to explain this new posterous thing.
We found that Facebook Groups felt more like a group wall than a product for sharing and collaboration. You can't send attachments via email, and you can't reply with anything besides plain text.
Posterous Groups makes email the core of the product. You can do everything via email including creating a group and replying with rich media attachments. There aren't any restrictions on what you can post.
Facebook Groups doesn't work well as a mobile experience. It's important for me to be able to post and consume content from my iphone. This works well in email and using the Posterous iPhone app.
While Facebook does have a large user base, there will always be people who aren't on the service or don't sign in to it regularly. We're firm believers that email is the best way to reach people.
We've made it seamless to get non Posterous users to understand how a group works and how they should participate. Give it a shot and please send feedback our way.
Exactly. I don't know why so many people believe facebook to have solved human communication. This is perfect for the way my friends are I discuss over literature, science, philosophy, and political topics. This is an application not taken very seriously by facebook groups (long posts get cut off, the "docs" feature is underwhelming, etc)
That's great, thanks. I didn't realise until this announcement that you guys are competing with facebook in some respects (at least in terms of where people spend time online). The way you guys are going, I won't be surprised you will be one of the biggest players on the internet in a few years.
It's frustrating on a lot of fronts, man. Over on Windy Citizen, we're asking local political bloggers to help moderate our Politics channel as we need some extra hands.
We got a volunteer who said she'd help moderate, but then all she wanted to do was post links on Facebook that pointed to WC stories. I explained to her that we were looking for her to help edit stories, post cool stuff, and participate in discussions and she kept asking if we could just move it all over to our Facebook page. I tried a few times to explain why that was counterproductive but she kept giving me blank looks. I asked her what web sites she visits, and she said, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple. That's it. Turns out, she doesn't even visit political blogs, she just visits their Facebook pages and talks about their content there. Unreal.
She's still posting her Facebook links, but the idea of her hanging out anywhere outside her "big 3" is just anathema to her. She's got X bandwidth for web sites, and it's all being consumed.
As far as I know, Facebook Groups still doesn't send media along in its email updates. While most everyone is on Facebook, many family members I know don't check it regularly enough to make it practical. Email is a different matter.
I think Facebook definitely has the stronghold with familiarity, though. I'd expect their groups features to expand dramatically in 2011.
By default, you get emails in FB groups for each message and comment, just like Posterous, and you can respond via email to post new messages (each group has its own email address) or comments. You could interact with multiple groups without ever logging into FB (I know because I do :).
I'm not sure about the media thing, though it's not really practical for video to attach the media...surely posterous doesn't do that either.
I don't see many small businesses or even teams within large companies using Facebook Groups to collaborate.
Not sure if that's relevant, since I don't see any way that they start using Posterous for that.
Whatever, I'm just throwing out my opinion that this doesn't seem like a big deal in Dec 2010. Maybe the ability to attach inline pictures will make all the difference, though.
Plenty of business and teams use Posterous Sites already today. Some are using Posterous as their public, outward facing site, and others as an internal, collaboration tool.
Many businesses also use Yahoo Groups or Google Groups today for email lists. Yet those products are pretty lacking.
We think there's a real need for a modern email list solution and we're confident we can get users from individuals to businesses to bring their lists to Posterous.
Also, Facebook just doesn't handle images well; anything you upload is downsized (though I noticed they've started providing an option for Higher Quality uploads) and you have to look for outside solutions to simple tasks like downloading an album. This is one of the reasons why I upload on my posterous and have it autopost to FB.
I had this exact problem twice in the last month, and both times, I found that everyone in the two real-world groups I was trying to bring online was already on Facebook. Literally every single person out of maybe 50 people total, spanning age ranges from teenagers to folks in their late 50s. I found it much easier to get them to use it than it would have been if I had to explain this new posterous thing.