

Posterous Swaps Blog Platform for Social Network - bamazizi
http://mashable.com/2011/09/12/posterous-spaces/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

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rufo
I really don't know how to feel about Posterous at this point.

When I signed up in the early days, it was awesome. They were the simple and
concise, yet ridiculously powerful alternative to tumblr - email
post@posterous.com, get a blog. I loved showing it to people because it was so
amazingly simple.

I understand that wasn't quite enough to draw users in and they needed to
evolve the product, but especially with this latest revision, my initial
reaction was that I have no idea what Posterous is anymore. The messaging on
the home page is terrible - "What's a space? A place for whatever!", and
nowhere is the product itself shown.

As an existing user, my first reaction was to check my existing Posterous
sites to make sure they were still blogs, and not Google+/Facebook-style
Pages. And as a new user, I don't think I'd understand why I'd want Posterous
in addition to Google+ or Facebook. (I understand that Posterous is better
about privacy, but the competitors all claim that too, and Facebook never gave
a shit about privacy - why would a new user believe Posterous?)

Again, I get they need to change their core product (or at least how it's
positioned). I'm just really not sure a psuedo-social-network is the right way
to go about it.

Even more than that, I miss the simplicity of "E-mail us anything. We'll post
it for you."

~~~
Elepsis
It's interesting because I had the exact same initial reaction: uh-oh, did
they change anything about my blog or group?

Personally, I almost never interact with posterous through the dashboard, but
this move makes it seem that I'm either very much in the minority of their
user base, or that they're no longer interested in serving my use case.
Possibly both.

The net result is that where I would likely have used them without hesitation
for another project I was planning on before these changes, now I feel like I
need to look around and explore alternatives (including possibly reverting to
a self-hosted WordPress blog).

~~~
radicaldreamer
Hmm, nothing has changed with sites and groups, this is a new way to display
and interact with them.

They all have their own standalone sites just as they always did and are just
as customizable as before. The main difference is that interacting with
content across multiple sites is much more streamlined through the new
interface.

~~~
jgilliam
Except they aren't called sites and groups any more. You're really
underestimating how important labeling is.

EDIT: Lots of people want sites, lots of people want private groups, but no
one wants a space simply because they don't know what that is.

------
thesethings
I was an early Posterous user (still active), long waiting for another shoe to
drop. The missing social things (stream view, notification banner, having
_others'_ content be your Dashboard, not your own old posts) seemed to be just
sitting there, ready to be added at any moment.

The good:

So... the new dashboard view is better for presenting data that they already
had "verbs" for. You can see new hearts (likes) to your posts much more
easily, the default view is your subscriptions, not your own old posts (as it
was previously).

Still needs work:

Discovery. There is no "regular" search, there is no tag search. The Find
Friends just spins into time out for me. There is no directory or recommended
Posterous spaces either.

[edit: Added everything below this line]

I'm generally hopeful. But I'm bummed that they really steer away from using
the word _blog_ /setting expectations for blog feature development. The
"Sharing stuff socially" space is crowded and well served at a rapid pace with
Path, Google+, Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, etc.

I really want blog services to have a modern social lens (like Tumblr). Right
now Tumblr is the only place that comes close.

I think there's room for more than one social blog platform (there's clearly
room for more than one social photo sharing site, music sharing site, etc).

Posterous initially seemed to be a social blog platform that wanted to build
out some of the "regular" (WordPress) features missing from Tumblr, like
commenting.

I wanted to live in a world where there was a minimal, control freak,
beautiful platform like Tumblr... AND a more "swiss army knife" social blog
platform like Posterous.

Since then, Posterous has done so many about faces (getting really email-
centric among other things), that I have lost my initial read on them, but I
like these new changes despite the fact that they're inching away from
blogdom.

(sidebar: it's worth noting here that there is a 3rd social blog platform,
<http://soup.io>. Soup.io, like Posterous, has long seemed to be on the verge
of dropping another shoe.)

------
Adaptive
Posterous used to be: Tumblr that worked, with better third-party service
integration.

Not sure what it is now. That's a problem. I've stopped recommending it to
people because I can't summarize it like this anymore.

~~~
zalew
I've stopped recommending when they didn't fix a bug I filed them MONTHS ago
<http://zalew.posterous.com/test-if-posterous-fixed-the-bug>

just checked, and it still loses photos. I guess they were to busy being
social to care about it.

------
brandonjrobins
I just set up a Posterous account for my startup a few weeks ago because I
heard lots of praise and recommendations about its simplicity and ease of use.
While I haven't posted much up til now I was just about to get serious with
it, then I saw this article and the changes.

At first glance things look quite a few of the options and features were
stripped out and the whole experience has now become more complicated...

I understand the need to pivot and change their business model, but moves like
this make me wonder if it was a good idea for them to do something this
drastic (only because from all I've heard about the services it was primarily
about its blogging features and its ability to share via other social
networks) and if I should consider looking for alternatives to what was (and
may still be?) a simple blog...

~~~
a4agarwal
You can still use Posterous Spaces as a blogging platform. We haven't removed
any of the features that make Posterous great for public sharing. We made
everything simpler, more social, and added a great iPhone app.

------
LargeWu
I wish they'd focus a bit more on some of the usability aspects of their core
platform instead of this sort of thing, which is useless to me. For example, I
still haven't figured out how to use the web interface to edit something I
posted in markdown via email - the WYSIWYG editor seems to convert my markdown
into literal characters. Or when posting audio I can't figure out how to
control where in my post the markup for it goes. It seems to be inserted
inside the first html tag, except when it isn't.

For all the talk about simplicity, I find these things do not fit my workflow
very well, which is just write a post, add some tags, add some audio. I would
be looking for a new platform except I don't want to have to upload all my
audio files on a new site again.

------
MadMikeyB
"Posterous Spaces" sounds just like Google+'s "Circles".

I never used Posterous for blogging anyway, but surely this is bound to piss
off the bloggers already using their service? Unless "Spaces" is just an
extension to their blogging platform, and the title is misleading.

~~~
a4agarwal
You can still use Posterous Spaces as a public blog. Each space can be public
or private.

We're solving a similar problem as google circles. The basic difference is
that Posterous Spaces are symmetric sharing so all members of a space can
post.

~~~
robryan
I see your trying to leverage the existing posterous to do it, which is good
from the perspective of getting it going but could easily alienate a portion
of the user base that were sold on the dead simple blogging message.

Sure these changes may still allow them to do the same thing but the shift in
terminology and organisation will be hinting to people the direct things are
going which is away from their use case.

Granted this new niche might be a good direction, the HN crowd are hardly a
good sample of opinions for something like this.

------
aaronbrethorst
Wow, their new logo looks a lot like the Microsoft Office logo.

Compare: <https://posterous.com/>

with: <http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/>

------
stxsteve
Just had a rather puzzling email exchange with the folks at Posterous
concerning the lack a easy/direct access to emailed posts to edit and tag
existing posts, especially "drafts".

I asked - "Can I ask why not just have a "manage Posts" button, menu item, or
tab on the opening page after signin? Thought the idea was "ease of use"."

The response - "We do appreciate the feedback and will consider it for future
updates, but it is not the direction the developers have chosen to take at
this time."

Puzzling because I've never heard a company say that "ease of use" was NOT the
direction they intended to go.

Disappointed blogger, looking to move on.

------
acangiano
I moved my personal blog last night, before this change. Perfect timing, I
know. At lunch today I went to cancel my posterous blog and I was puzzled. It
had become a "space", and I couldn't find a way to delete it. I had to delete
my account in the end. I'm very glad I made the move to self-hosted WP now.

Posterous had a few good ideas, but as far as blog platforms go, it was too
limiting. They should have focused on improving their core business, instead
of transforming it into a half-assed Google+.

------
Montenaro
Wow I seem to remember in the blurb that accompanied the horrible new
dashboard (that assumes it knows all about us and who we want to share with
and will nag and nag and nag until you conform to their way) something about
pages loading 3 times faster. Either my computer has suddenly developed
problems or they made a typo and it should have been 3 times slower.

I can't even delete a page. Gutted because I moved a lot of stuff here from
Slinkset (which was awesome, although not a blogging platform). I had to
because Slinkset closed down after being bought up by Posterous (why buy
something so you can destroy it ? What am I missing here ?). Now I have to
work out how to move everything on again. Let's hope Posterous are as amenable
about you exporting your blogs to other platforms as they are about you
importing them.

I'm tired of this sort of thing.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

------
kd1220
"Een schip op het strand is een baken in zee."

Posterous should have taken notes from previous sharing sites/functions:
Facebook, Digg, MySpace, Google Buzz, etc.

If you change things drastically, your userbase gets mad, and they seek out
alternatives. I tend to see social sharing sites as a home online. You put
many of your meaningful items there, and you get comfortable with a certain
layout, a given set of functionalities, etc. If someone were to come and
redecorate/reorganize your room or house without your permission, you'd
probably be a little upset.

Facebook eventually mastered the art of introducing change into its site.
Nudging the user to try something new ("X of your friends are using the new
layout. Join them!") instead of forcing it on them seems to be a better
policy.

------
kin
The description of what it is feels like a Tumblr with Google+ privacy
settings, which is a cool feature. One thing I've always wanted was for my
Posterous blog sites to have an RSS feed for just that site instead of forcing
users to follow me and have an RSS feed of their reader.

------
bonaldi
And still they have the world's smallest body font.

------
covercash
Finally someone has a story about it! The iPhone app updated this morning and
I couldn't' find any details about it (my tweets were the only mentions of it
in Twitter search).

------
lkrubner
It's a bit dated now, but I think this is still the best take on why Tumblr
did better than Posterous:

~~~
pestaa
Is anything coming after the colon in a subsequent edit? The problem is not in
my device, I guess.

(I don't try to sound funny, I really am curious what you have to say about
these two services.)

------
cheez
The transformation to MySpace is complete.

~~~
kennystone
You mean tumblr?

------
EtienneJohnred
They should also change the name. It turns out that failpivot.com is
available.

------
doctoroakin
desperate attempt. Who really needs another social network ".....but were
different than G+/FB/and twitter" ...total FAIL

