
Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust - malte
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tumblr_leaves_posterous_in_the_dust.php#more
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jacobian
I've got to admit to taking a certain guilty pleasure in these numbers after
Posterous' last campaign to get switchers. They were pompous, arrogent, and
unnecessarily slagged on their competition. I'm pleased to see that such nasty
tactics (apparently) paid little dividends.

~~~
weixiyen
I was actually about to use Posterous, but the campaign brought my attention
to Tumblr, which previously I thought was just a tumble-log, not a blog with
complete features.

After checking out Tumblr, it was not clear to me that Posterous was the
better product and there were some issues with DDOS attacks at the same time.
Also I saw two other people I knew using Tumblr as well.

If Posterous really became the clear-cut best blogging platform someday, I
could always switch over with the switch tool, so the decision to use Tumblr
for now was an easy one.

~~~
pavs
I swear, this might be hard to believe for some, this is EXACTLY the reason I
tried out tumblr and ended up having a permanent blog there. It gave me the
impression that tumblr was doing something right for posterous to try to
"snag" their users.

I heard about tumblr all these years but never tried it before. Its funny how
things work.

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maxklein
The problem with Posterous is that the changes they have made over the past 8
months (since I started using it) have been small and irrelevant things (like
code highlighting or such stuff).

When I write, I want to be appreciated and I want my writing to reach a big
audience. Tumblr achieves that, posterous never made any change in that
direction.

Posterous started off cool and fresh, but that initial slew of innovation has
not been followed up on. Things like the backtype widget, view count, etc all
were there from the start, and later not much new stuff came after that.

Posterous have focused too much on these technical stuff (like CSS buttons),
and too little on the social stuff. I write for people to read, not for my
page to look good.

Don't get me wrong, I like posterous a lot. But I just think posterous is
simple by being limiting.

~~~
rantfoil
We're definitely working on it. =) But this feedback is super helpful. Thanks
Max.

~~~
maxklein
See reply below to Matt for more details of what I meant.

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pavs
No one in his right mind, outside the HN hivemind, things posterous is a
serious challenge to tumblr.

~~~
listic
I have no idea what anyone thinks about matters like those outside the HN
hivemind. How do you?

I started using Tumblr to jot down my notes because it looked cool and simple.
To my regret, a couple times I found new "social" features on my dashboard,
but that's it. I was actually afraid that this hobby project will fade away
and shut down, unneeded. I was surprised to find it is not so!

~~~
andreyf
Thought this too, until I moved in with two professional (that is, paid)
bloggers in NYC. Apparently, there's quite an ecosystem of tumblr "publishers"
who care deeply about their tumblr follower numbers, etc.

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samwillis
The two metrics that the article is based on are the number of visitors to the
services homepage. On Tumblr you login to the website to post content,
Posterous on the other hand uses email and so doesn't get its members visiting
all the time to post new content. I think this article is flawed.

~~~
pavs
tumblr also allows posting by email, not to mention large amount of desktop
publishing software that can be used to publish posts on tumblr. I have never
used the tumblr homepage to publish blog post and I know quite a few people
who doesn't do it either.

~~~
heinel
They do not advertise that feature as much though, and by using email,
wouldn't you miss out on at least some of their main social networking selling
point?

A lot of what makes them popular can only be found on their site. You don't
get any engineering vibe from them, they project a very sensitive image that
appeals to the heart. By not visiting their site, you are not participating.

I think the posterous offering is not diluted by email posting, and it would
at least appear to me to make more sense if more people on posterous use email
posting.

~~~
pavs
I can only speak for myself. I personally user tumblr (only started few months
ago) for private ramblings about random stuff that comes in my mind. My tumblr
is blocked from search engine and I have not shared the link with anyone. I
also blocked out comments and whatever other social media features there might
be. I would have made it password protected if they allowed private tumblers
to have access to API (you can't post to password protected pages from desktop
publishing software AFAIK).

I know this is not how or why most people use tumblr. But thats ok. I use it
only the way I like it.

I also have a "public" self hosted wordpress blog which I share with my
friends and family and open to search engine.

posterous, to me, is just yet another blogging platform. Just like I don't
feel like I need to try out every single new things comes out every week, I
don't feel like posterous really sets them apart is such a way from all other
existing blogging platform for me to even bother.

~~~
heinel
Of course Posterous is just another blogging platform. Have they tried to be
anything else? The way you described how you use tumblr does seem to suggest
that Posterous is actually a better fit, but it appears that you just found
tumblr first and didn't bother to switch.

The Posterous switch campaign awhile back was targeted at users like you.
That's how they were trying to set themselves apart. It might not have worked
well, but the intention is clear.

There is only so much a utility product can do to diversify itself from
competitors. A condom is a condom is a condom. As long as it doesn't leak, it
works. Would you complain that Trojan's products are not sufficiently
different from Durex?

~~~
pavs
If I were to take your analogy seriously than it would right to argue that all
operating systems are just OS, it makes no difference whether you use windows,
OSX, Linux, BSD, solaris.

The reason yor analogy doesn't work is because condoms are single purpose,
blogging software and OS are not. They can be and has been able to set them
apart from one another with features, implementations, ease of use and
services.

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ziadbc
These two services have similarities, but someone could just have well written
an article that says "Wordpress leaves Tumblr and Posterous in the dust."

I like the idea of a YC company taking on an existing one head on once in
awhile, rather than looking for an overtly specific niche. Posterous still has
a ton of users, and I think at one point and time the digg vs reddit chart
looked pretty similar. Look at it today and you will see a different story.

~~~
scorpion032
Digg let down themselves. I doubt Tumblr is going to do. If nothing else, they
have a decent design taste. That alone is enough to survive and multiply.

~~~
andreyf
They do have good design taste, but their technical side is missing quite a
bit. Just earlier today, I couldn't figure out how to submit an image by URL
(since they automatically resized my original): kept getting some kind of
"invalid file" error (I'm not uploading a file!). Scheduled-publication was
also broken the 1 time I tried it. Very frustrating.

------
webwright
There's a timeshifting problem at work here. If Tumblr was indeed first to
market, then it SHOULD be ahead. They are similar products with similar
(viral) growth styles. A more interesting questions would be this: Is
Posterous growing as fast as Tumblr when Tumblr was at this stage/age.

Similar articles were written about Facebook and Twitter and now Twitter is
getting 370k new accounts per day. It just takes time.

Personally, I find the social network features of Tumblr really jumbled and
confusing as an outsider. LiveJournal was a social network, too, and it
plateaued.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Posterous was a year later than Tumblr but first to market doesn't count for
as much as some people make out.

For social sites (Twitter, Facebook etc.) it's important because of the
network effects but to read and interact with a blog on a particular site you
don't need to have a blog on that site yourself (else we'd all still have
LiveJournals). That means age or growth doesn't mean too much.

Of course that counts for Tumblr too which means that you've got to look at
more standard factors for growth - functionality, cost, brand awareness and so
on - and in these areas Tumblr seems to have an advantage which I suspect is
why it's growing faster.

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nhebb
I don't post to either, but Tumblr makes it 100x easier to explore content on
the site. Posterous doesn't even try - they bury the "Explore" link on the
bottom of the home page and clicking that just gets the visitor a list of
random and unorganized posts.

~~~
zalew
Exactly. Also, tumblr is full of NSFW blogs and that's a huge boost in visits.

~~~
Legion
That point is exactly the first thing I thought of when I read the article.
How much of Tumblr's traffic is for "photo blogs" of naked girls? Based on
what I've observed, probably a good amount.

Not that that traffic is somehow invalid, but I think it makes the comparison
a bit more apples-to-oranges.

~~~
zalew
Not exactly apples to oranges, because that doesn't make the community
argument invalid. It's the fun of exploring content on Tumblr that made it
possible to grow a network of erotic photoblogs (and not only erotic, check
all the 'f __*yeahsomething' categories, all kind of lols and such). I didn't
bother to check if Posterous' TOS somehow block such content, but still if it
was there, currently it's not so easy to find and follow as on Tumblr.

~~~
heinel
Not exactly apple to orange, but more Facebook to LinkedIn?

A social network's content is its people. I think Tumblr did well targeting
the casual crowd. Posterous blogs that I come across, on the other hand, are
very "merit-arian," so to speak. Lots of industry focused minds on there that
is famous not because of Posterous, but because they are also high in some
other circle. In this case, Posterous is only providing them with the tools,
with a small Posterous ad attached.

I wouldn't want to see them sacrificing that just to beat Tumblr.

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pierrefar
Another very important metric, probably more important than raw traffic is
number of users and number of posts to each service. You can get more creative
in number of posts per blog per month, recency data (e.g. X% of all users have
blogged at least once in the past 90 days) and get an even better picture.

Without this kind of context, raw traffic is kinda meaningless. At least the
quantcast numbers for both are directly measured and not "estimated".

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city41
Maybe I'm completely wrong but to me it always felt like Tumblr landed on a
seriously awesome name. There's just something nice about it: simple, clean,
clever, cute, and very contemporary. It just feels nice. I wouldn't be
surprised if Tumblr's name played a small factor in getting people to come
check it out.

Sadly I think posterous's name is quite bad. It sounds like a developer came
up with it (no offense guys), it doesn't roll off the tongue and it sounds
intimidating.

These are just my hunches, no data at all to back any of this up, but I do
feel like the right name can make a difference.

------
zalew
Tumblr is easy to love as it seems less obliging from the start. It's
dashboard is a prime example of KISS, and it's easy to use most of the
features as well as not use them at all. I came to Posterous for it's
'autopost' feature which works really fine and I've used it for some time.

Both apps are great, Posterous webservices integration beats Tumblr, but the
latter wins in terms of 'hanging around' browsing stuff from the community and
that's probably the key point of their success in stats.

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kwamenum86
Is it me or is that not exponential growth?

~~~
borism
nope, just wanted to point out the same, and there's second comment about it
too

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jonpaul
I wish Tumblr would start charging for something. These services that are
completely free worry me in the long run. I've put my heart and soul into
writing almost every weekday on my blog. I would be devastated if they ever
shut down. I would gladly pay to use it.

~~~
jacobbijani
We offer paid themes and directory promo spots.

Treat yourself to a pretty theme:

    
    
        http://www.tumblr.com/themes/premium
    

You'll also be supporting the theme designer in the process.

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antidaily
I like tumblr - I like that I can point a domain there and essentially get
free hosting. Problem is, the system is frequently down. And the way posts are
queued to be published is just goofy.

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cemerick
[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tumblr.com+posterous.com+wo...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tumblr.com+posterous.com+wordpress.com/)

 _ahem_

I know people get worked up about new stuff, but that doesn't mean the new
stuff is better than the old (often far more reliable, featureful, etc. etc).
I went with wordpress.com a couple months ago, and have loved it (with email
posting and excellent code highlighting, even for Clojure :-P).

------
points
How do either of them make money?

Eyeballs are good, but revenue is better.

------
mjv
I evaluated both of these platforms without really thinking that either were
competing with each other (although, I guess it's obvious). I found that, yes,
Tumblr is huge, more user friendly and community driven, but it's also over-
run with 13 year olds posting Twilight pictures, whereas Posterous just felt a
little more focused on the single user blogging experience. A lot less clique-
influenced. I liked that. It's disheartening to know they're going for the
same things Tumblr is.

~~~
robryan
That is something I've found, it is possible that the posterous user base can
be more easily monetised than the tumblr mainly because on average they
actually have money too spend. They both seem to lack a real revenue model
currently.

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mseebach
> However for all of Posterous' hard work and bluster, it's been Tumblr that
> has grown exponentially over the past year.

For _very_ linear implementations of exp()

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ludwigvan
One word: Beauty.

I prefer and use Posterous; but somehow Tumblr seems to be much more
beautiful; more Apple-ish. Posterous sites seems more serious.

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wlfsbrg
One of my biggest issues with Tumblr is the way they handle analytics. If you
don't spend a couple minutes ahead of time setting up filters, you end up
seeing all your own visits to a ton of admin pages like edit, themes, new and
a few others. They make it pretty hard to accurately track your metrics.

~~~
nroach
Of course, with Posterous, you can't track your metrics at all, unless you use
Google Analytics. Any JS embedding, including tracking snippets are not
supported.

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zecg
"Celebrities and big media sites" listed as key to tumblr's recent explosion?
No, the secret is the service allowing a HUGE forest of porn compilation sites
such as <http://art-or-porn.tumblr.com/> and many like it.

~~~
telemachos
What exactly do you mean by "the secret is the service allowing a HUGE forest
of porn compilation sites"? That is, does Tumblr actively do something to help
porn compilation sites use their service, or do they simply not ban them?

Also, since I often see this mentioned as a difference, does Posterous do
something to block porn (however strictly)?

I suppose my real question is "Sure, Tumblr has a lock on the porn market
right now, but _why_?"

~~~
heinel
<http://www.tumblr.com/directory/erotica> (NSFW, FYI)

I guess you could argue erotica isn't porn, but yes, they like it. The notion
actually extends beyond sexually explicit material, as many popular tumblelogs
in the directory has porn or something that alludes to porn in their title
even though they have nothing to do with sex.

~~~
Mistone
porn has always been a great early indicator on the web, and the fact that
blogger porn sites have exploded on Tumblr indicates that is usability, and
social features are superior.

I'm a big fan of Posterous but the social edge on Tumblr means more traffic
and exposure for the blog which what attracts and keeps people on the
platform.

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lhnz
I couldn't even get the import from tumblr feature to work on posterous...

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jsvaughan
No idea about posterous but there are lots of robot created profiles on tumblr
(presumably for SEO purposes)

