
Posterous (YC summer 08) Beats Tumblr In Simplicity - ptm
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/28/posterous-beats-tumblr-in-simplicity/
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rantfoil
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!

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pauljonas
/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.

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jraines
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.

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

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volida
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?

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rantfoil
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.

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mtts
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.

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dcurtis
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.

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jacobbijani
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?

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

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

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colinplamondon
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!"

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rantfoil
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.

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colinplamondon
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?

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soundsop
_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>

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

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

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

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tlrobinson
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.

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rokhayakebe
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.

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

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

<http://garry.posterous.com>

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

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jacobbijani
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.

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brett
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.

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jacobbijani
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.

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

THEMES!

That's what got wordpress it's place.

