

Posthaven Launches In Public Beta - garry
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/posthaven-launches-in-public-beta-has-saved-850k-posts-since-posterous-announced-its-shutdown-date-of-april-30th/

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modernerd
I signed up for an account today. They don't give much away on their homepage,
so here's a preview of the current post editor for those interested:

<http://d.pr/i/189H>

You can sign up today for $5 and you won't be billed again until they're out
of beta. I felt it was worth doing because I support their vision and I'm keen
to see how it develops, even though the actual product is very bare bones at
the moment. (e.g. No template editing, no pages, can't save posts as drafts.)

What they have so far seems fast, clean, and easy to use, though. The
environment is refreshing compared to WordPress and more suited to medium-to-
longform writing than tumblr.

My advice to the creators: show actual mockups of what you're hoping to build.
(e.g. <http://john.onolan.org/ghost/> )

Promising never to sell out is great, but I would much rather see a visual
pledge in the form of, "This is what we plan to make [screenshots] and this is
the order we're building those features." Even if you don't offer a definitive
schedule, at least your beta backers will feel more invested in the journey
you're on.

~~~
garry
Thanks for this feedback and for your support. I really appreciate it. I'll
try to incorporate all of this into the site today.

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apalmer
Hey, someone explain to me what happened here... seems like twitter bought
Posterous to shut it down, and the founders took the money and basically
started the same product with a new name and a pay model.

~~~
garry
I left Posterous over a year before the acquisition due to a difference in
opinion over strategy. Brett had also left before. I didn't agree with where
my cofounder wanted to go with it. I was bummed to see it didn't work out as
we had hoped when it was acq-hired. I use Posterous a ton, and I needed a
replacement anyway. Thus, Posthaven. I've been working at YC since 2011,
actually.

~~~
jerrya
Last year, I started using Posterous, both as blogger and developer.

As a blogger it worked fine.

As a developer it was terribly supported. The API was fine, but the
implementations were often terribly flawed. Tags could not be deleted. Posts
entered with markup could not be retrieved as markup. It was almost impossible
to connect to an engineer at Posterous who cared.

I do hope Posthaven succeeds. I encourage you to have an API. I encourage you
to treat your external developers with the respect Posterous was unable to
show.

~~~
garry
Makes sense. We've been careful to stick to RESTful endpoints so it should be
a matter of creating API keys and documenting it properly.

~~~
jerrya
The Posterous API was very RESTful and was my first real exploration into
that. I wrote an emacs posterous blogging extension, and it was a very
valuable learning experience in REST.

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MatthewPhillips
Advice to startups: list your price at its yearly rate, not monthly. I see the
words "per month" and I think yet another thing sipping on my bank account
every month. It's silly but it's easier to accept that I'm dishing out money
for something that I won't have to think about again until a year.

~~~
untog
I think you're in the minority, there. People notice the numbers first, and
the lower the number the better.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
You're probably right.

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pnathan
Hi Garry (& Posthaven team),

So I've used Livejournal, Dreamwidth, Tumblr, and Posterous before, maybe a
few other blogging services. LJ has disintegrated due to $xyz politics,
Dreamwidth is pretty awesome but very small, Tumblr is looking for $$$, and
Posterous is, well, you know.

So I regret to say that I do not look forward to using Posthaven. I instead
plan to write my own content system that is git & markdown driven that renders
out to my own site, paid for by me. You see, I do not trust content hosting
anymore without significant reason to believe they won't drop me into a hole
because $business-reason. Perhaps if Posthaven is still a going concern in 5
years and fully self-owned/IPO'd, then I will consider it a reasonable place
to put time into. I guess I've just gotten burnt and my crispyness is starting
to show.

I do wish you the best of luck, and I hope that Posthaven is a long-term
stable business.

Regards, Paul

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wiwillia
I love the concept of Posthaven because it says that a huge exit doesn't have
to be the end game for every startup.

They've made a promise to their users to live by a sustainable business model
instead of shooting the moon. Writing should be permanent, but the model of
startups is one that favors the temporary. This seems like a logical next
step.

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mhartl
I've decided that any content I produce in the future will be completely under
my control, and in this context I've been very pleased with the
Octopress/Jekyll setup I installed for the Rails Tutorial news feed
(<http://news.railstutorial.org/>) once the Posterous shutdown date was
announced. That said, I'm really happy that Garry and Brett have made
Posthaven, and I'm excited to see them come so far so fast.

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ispivey
Anyone who complains about how they can't trust the Posthaven team because
Posterous was shut down has to put $10 into the 'poor reading comprehension'
pool.

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dude_abides
Is there an option for a paying customer to "suspend" his account? If so, then
how long after "suspending" would the customer's content get deleted?

~~~
garry
We were thinking if someone pays for a year, we'll just keep the content
online forever. Paul Buchheit actually gave us that idea.

~~~
dude_abides
I like this idea! But what happens if someone "suspends" their account after 1
month? How long will the content remain online then?

There is no point in asking these questions about a free product. But since
this is a paid product, an exhaustive Data Retention Policy will be very
helpful, IMO.

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JustARandomGuy
Just signed up. My thoughts: Looks pretty slick. My hat's off to you guys. I
like that you already have custom domains option available, some services
charge extra for that (i.e. Wordpress).

I realize you're still in beta, but I'd like to make a feature request: the
ability to email posts to my blog and have them autoposted.

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nicpottier
I moved my blogs over the Posthaven and I have to say the import worked quite
nicely.

Still waiting on custom styling before switching the domains over though. Hope
that happens before April 30th. Also hope they do a better job of Markdown
than Posterous.

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webwanderings
This is really weird.

> Its creators are also inspired by Google Reader’s recent demise

What does a demise of a Google product has to do with another totally
different product by a different company?

~~~
garry
Google Reader is a social service that was free. Google is a company that
makes a lot of money, just not on that thing. The product was added to a
"projects to cut" list in an email by a Google executive, and the next day it
was axed.

Twitter bought Posterous for the talented team. A year later, the service is
axed.

This is why things like Newsblur or Posthaven should exist for certain types
of socially valuable purposes -- it's a paid service that won't go away.
Because, well, money.

~~~
webwanderings
Your argument notwithstanding but there is no proof, or solid precedence, of a
paid service surviving just because it is a paid service.

Google did not say (at least not publicly) that they're cutting GR because the
service wasn't generating revenue.

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sherjilozair
I think there should also be a free version, perhaps with restrictions.

~~~
masnick
Disagree. This is something you should have to pay for, especially given their
promise to keep your stuff online forever. Paying makes the business model
clear; a free plan starts to muddy the waters and certainly is no benefit to
paying users or the company.

There are plenty of places to post for free if you don't care about keeping
your stuff around forever. You get what you pay for after all.

~~~
sherjilozair
So, one of the restrictions could be that my stuff would only be online if
there is activity on it, subject to a maximum of say, a year.

I would like to try Posthaven and only if I feel that its worth 5$/month to
me, then I can consider upgrading from the free plan to the paid one.

A free plan is beneficial to the company, since it would help in popularizing
the app.

~~~
masnick
I see how having a free demo account might be helpful for trying out the
service, but a permanently free account is totally contrary to the idea of
posthaven.

Really though, paying $5 to try it out isn't a huge deal if you don't like the
service -- you can cancel whenever. I'd rather see development of useful
features than the devs worrying about a free demo thing. Because of the way
it's structured, a free trial doesn't benefit the company or paying users --
growth is not the goal, sustainability is.

Bottom line: I don't think this is the right place for people unwilling to put
$5 toward an awesome idea/business model. You can go use tumblr or blogger or
whatever.

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whather
Awesome Garry!

