

Posterous (YC S08) launches private, password-protected blogs by email - rantfoil
http://blog.posterous.com/password-protect-your-posterou

======
thedob
The way these guys pump out features, I don't see how any other blogging
service can keep up. If other services try to add more engineers it will only
slow down their process. Goes to show there's no better way to build a product
than with a small group of awesome, dedicated coders.

~~~
marketer
The most important feature in a blogging platform is the content that's
already on it, and in that sense, Posterous still has a lot of catching up to
do. More content drives organic growth through links and other SEO mechanisms,
which in turn drives more users to sign up.

~~~
dsims
And when and if you do get that huge growth, all these cool features don't
always scale well. I think scaling issues is what really slows down innovation
with the big guys.

------
jmtame
5 points in <1 minute ;) i can tell you guys roll deep on YC hah

~~~
davi
Posterous does "roll deep" on HN, but I'm also really excited about this
feature.

The general blog semantic of visible/invisible is simple but underpowered:
there are a lot of things I want to show to one group of people that would
just be noise to another group. This sort of feature lets me segregate my
output.

------
pclark
I'm curious is Posterous thinks tumblr is a competitor?

[PS: is it just me, or are there no theme options at all with Posterous?]

~~~
rantfoil
Theming is in our crosshairs right now.

~~~
pclark
please don't go the tumblr route of having bizarre CSS markup :)

~~~
rantfoil
Whats bizarre CSS markup? like {block:Posts}{/block:Posts}?

~~~
pclark
yeah. Breaks stuff like CSSEdit - which _we_ might not use, but lots of
developers _do_ :)

~~~
jacobbijani
that's not css at all, it's just how the template blocks are defined.

and it's a template engine people who aren't computers can actually
understand.

~~~
unalone
Yeah, but at the same time it's weird when you're theming something and you
try to use an editor and for video/audio posts you can't actually see what it
looks like.

Any tips, since you're one of the big Tumblr stylists? (Also, did your Dadaist
theme ever get made public or was that a demo?)

~~~
jacobbijani
Just theme it as a static html page with 7 sample posts (or 9, if you want to
do each quote size differently) and all the proper pagination and everything.
Then once it's all ready to go, save a copy of it as a .txt file and add the
blocks in. That part honestly takes about 5 minutes.

~~~
unalone
That's something I wondered, looking at your theme: does Tumblr auto-handle
quote sizes? I've never seen it in any CSS file that I've looked at in any of
the themes I've sampled: how do you differentiate?

~~~
jacobbijani
There is {Length}, which returns either "short", "medium", or "long". Then you
just do something like .quote.long {font-size: 50px}

Check out <http://www.tumblr.com/docs/custom_themes>

~~~
unalone
Wow. I've never seen that page before. Thanks a ton!

------
davi
Shit. I'm now at serious risk of turning into a fanboy.

The only thing that really keeps me from diving in is that my data are owned
by someone else. I see I can use it w/ my own domain, which is really cool
(<http://posterous.com/faq/>), but is there any way to import/export data?

My content is precious to me. I don't want to give it to a web startup if I
can't get it back.

BUT -- if I post by email, everything I post will be mirrored to my usual
email places ...

Leaving only other people's comments on my posts, and submissions to my
groups, that I won't be able to archive. (Cue sound of needle scratching
across record.)

I can see this might not be a concern for a wide swathe of the potential
Posterous user base... but for this prospective user, it matters.

Any plans to implement some data export/migration capabilities, rantfoil?

[edit: maybe there is an option to have other people's comments & posts to my
group be forwarded to my email? Don't see it in documentation -- time to make
an account & find out if the option is there.]

~~~
rantfoil
In the age of open API's, do you need to ask? =)

API's are coming, both for posting and retrieving. It's going to be one of the
big tent pole features alongside theming we're excited about in the next few
months.

~~~
davi
Sounds like a good trajectory.

Although there is a difference between exposing API to developers vs. giving
users a feature, my "I want to own my data" worries will be greatly assuaged
if a good API exists.

~~~
pclark
Disqus has/had a great feature where you could get an automated weekly "dump"
of all the comments on your site.

------
gaius
How is this different from a friends-only Livejournal?

~~~
davi
Looks like you don't need a Posterous account to view password-protected
content. Just the password. Not true on LiveJournal. (Not a user of either,
yet, but this is how things look on inspection. Corrections/amplifications
welcomed.)

There are lots of people in my life who I could give a link and a password to,
but who I would _not_ ask to make a LiveJournal account.

~~~
a4agarwal
yeah this was a big deal for us. Most other sites do access through accounts.
That stinks. I want to share my family site with my 100 family members. No way
they are going to create accounts. But they do know how to type in a password.

~~~
davi
Absolutely right.

Here's an additional use case from my world: I'm in grad school & often want
to share data and thoughts with various scientific honchos whose time budgets
are very limited.

Now I can cc. a Posterous group called "my advisor might be interested"
whenever I send an email. When my advisor gets some downtime, he can check
this group out. This lets me communicate in a "non-push" way to him -- I don't
clutter his inbox with my email, but I do get to keep him in the loop.

Essentially, this lets me create a "soft" cc. semantic.

I've had this in mind for a while, and made some half-baked efforts to roll my
own, but trying out your service will be much easier in the short term.

Keep up the good work!

------
hendler
While this is a feature you can add to other blogs - I think it has a twitter-
like appeal - ease of use, adaptable.

Best of luck.

------
brlewis
I hope this gets more people interested in private group sites for families.

~~~
markbao
If you're looking for family group sites, take a look at my startup:
<http://ramamia.com>

------
jfornear
@Posterous: What about a feature that lets you embed your blog anywhere you
want, such as on your MySpace page or on your own design?

~~~
rantfoil
I think widget embeds are a no-brainer -- we've got a few other big things
ahead in the pipe, but I expect this to come later this year.

------
shader
Posterous seems like a logical place to add support for webhooks, as an
alternative to rss and email. They practically have the whole system already,
but in email instead.

Any plans to add webhooks functionality?

------
chrysb
Well done guys.

