

Posterous (YC 08) unveils Post Editor 2.0 - timf
http://blog.posterous.com/posterous-unveils-post-editor-20-upload-and-m

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mrshoe
I'm starting to see a pattern in startup strategy...

Build a minimum viable product without accounts, management interfaces, rich
text editors, etc. Market that product based on its _lack_ of such features
("It's so simple!"). Once you have traction, go build all those features.
Market your new product based on _having_ those features ("It's so
powerful!").

~~~
raghus
Which kind of makes sense, doesn't it? Why build the whole thing when you're
not even sure that people will care.

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davi
Language nit: "Posterous is not a microblog. It's your place to post
everything." I think defining oneself to an audience in terms of a negative --
'we are not x, we are not y, we are z!' -- tends to leave a negative
association. Just flip the sign, to something more like, "Posterous is way
more than a microblog -- it's your place to post everything!"

Anyway, cool new features. Image crop, in addition to rotation, would probably
satisfy 80% of what a casual user ever needs to do before posting. Rotation
alone probably satisfies 50%. I'd be interested to hear the founders' thinking
about which features they included vs. excluded in this release.

I'm using Posterous to share pictures of our new daughter with friends &
family. It's great for family members to be able to share their pictures of
her by email -- a few of my computer-naive relatives can't handle DropBox, but
can handle sending a photo in an email attachment. I am nervous about giving
my content to a startup that quite likely will get acquired & disappear, but I
can archive the pages w/ Zotero, so that's something I guess.

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maxklein
It's pretty good. It has solved part of my biggest problem, which was the
images. Previously, I had to upload images to imgur and then link then, but
now I can upload them directly.

See sample: <http://blog.cubeofm.com/private/HkgpEbuDGE>

I'll still be using imgur though, because they only allow uploading images
from your computer and they have no resize option. I usually search of flickr,
right click, get the url, add by url to imgur and let it resize to 500. With
posterous, I'd have to download it, resize with photoshop, reupload it, which
is more work.

It also does not allow me save drafts, so I'll have to keep these in my text
files still.

All the same, posterous is good enough for my needs. The reason I use
posterous is really ONLY because of this:

\- The pageview counter on the right

\- The backtype widget at the bottom

\- The fact that some people subscribe using posterous

\- I don't seem to get much spam there

If those things were not there, I would have changed to wordpress a long time
ago. Yes, I know I could add some wordpress plug-ins, but I really can't be
bothered, you know.

And if I had a wordpress blog with a pageview counter, it would look
pretentious, because everyone would know I added it, but a posterous blog
looks normal because it's part of the default.

That's why I use posterous - not because I love it, but because it's easy, it
works, and it has some minor things I prefer over the other alternatives.

~~~
rantfoil
Thanks Max, been great to see you on Posterous.

For images, any uploads do get resized to a 500px version automatically. Also
if you paste a raw URL to an image (must end with .jpg, .gif or .png), we
download and resize to 500px if you just drop the URL to the image on its own
line in the post. I use it all the time.

For drafts, private posts actually work quite well. Flip it live and hit
autopost to push.

Thanks a ton for the feedback, much appreciated.

~~~
maxklein
I absolutely did not know that thing with putting an image url in its own
line. Now I do and you're right, it's great. Just saved me a ton of time.

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thesethings
Yaaaay! I was using Gmail as a Posterous blog post editor (because attaching
images and mp3's and then sending them to Posterous resulted in beautiful
posts, something confusingly less possible with the web editor.). Anyway, I
had no doubt they were cooking up something for the web editor... not because
i had inside information, but just because they seem extremely thoughtful and
in touch with how people actually work. (They prioritized email/mobile
editing... fair enough. And probably smart, though less applicable to me.)
Keep up the great work, Posterous folks!

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jazzychad
There is something about the rich text editor in the web interface that makes
it uneditable on iphones/ipads. This is a shame because I wanted to write a
long post on the train and format it the way I like. Yes, the straight HTML
editor works, but coding on an iP* is tedious and horrible. You may also get a
lot more mobile and "couch bloggers" if you can do rich text editing this way
as well. My $0.02.

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siculars
Good work, a4agarwal & Co. I just used the new editor to post
[http://siculars.posterous.com/my-i-also-think-apple-is-
sauce...](http://siculars.posterous.com/my-i-also-think-apple-is-sauced-post).
One suggestion I would make would be to update the "Post" button to read
"Update Post" or something like that when you are updating a post.

