Why is Posterous the Platform of the Future?
July 28, 2009
Filed Under: in Analysis, Featured Articles, Sharing, Social Media
Author: Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
Welcome back.
Earlier this afternoon, I was pointed to (by Steve Rubel, not surprisingly) to a post up on Wayne Sutton’s blog that intimated that Post.ly (or Posterous) is the platform of the future.
I’d respectfully disagree.
Posterous is a blog style CMS that uses your email client as your post window. Simply, you email your post to Posterous, and it creates a blog post out of it for you.
I see the appeal, for newbies at least. You’re able to create a blog without going through the extensive account setup and configuration you must go through on most other services. A laundry list of influencers regularly maintain a Post.ly blog: Chris Brogan, Steve Rubel, Mike Arrington, Ted Murphy, Andy Beal, Jason Falls and iJustine to name a few.
Here’s my problem with Posterous, at least as the hot new trend with the digerati: this is not a new feature.
Blogger, one of the first white-label blogging services, has had this functionality almost since it’s inception. Wordpress has had this functionality as well. It’s trivially easy to set both of these up, and then to allow email posting.
There’s very little that Posterous offers that can’t be either hobbled together from other free services or turned on out of the box with most available blog CMS’s.
Beyond that, almost every other CMS is far more extensible and robust, allowing you to grow beyond simple posts.
So I ask again: why is Posterous the platform of the future?
John, it's a whole lot of work to "hobble together" what works instantly on Posterous.
They're not inventing anything new. They're just making what was there work more easily.
Think of all the steps and plugins you'd need to have Wordpress access your posts via email and then send them to Twitter. Most people can't do that.
I can see this thread became a bit of an 'argument' and I certainly don;t want to fuel that but, I have to agree with Andrew; "it's a whole lot of work to "hobble together" what works instantly on Posterous" and "they're not inventing anything new. They're just making what was there work more easily"... I think you've summed up the ease and attraction of Posterous.
Ok, perhaps it doesn;t offer all the widgetery you can have with your own hosted WP blog but let's be honest, you have to be extremely knowledgeable, tech-minded and have a heck of a lot of time on your hands to build a WP (self-hosted) blog. The trutyh is that there are not many features in a WP blog "right out of the box" and that explains why so many WP blogs all look like, well, blogs...
Andrew, again you're right (IMO) when you say "Think of all the steps and plugins you'd need to have Wordpress access your posts via email and then send them to Twitter. Most people can't do that."
Honestly - it's pretty simple to do out of the box.
What does posterous offer? A URL shortener and the ability to post via email. The posting via email works out of the box with both Blogger, Blogspot and Wordpress.
If you want to post client side via XML-RPC, Windows Live Writer works with several dozen blogging platforms transparently - that's a five minute download, install and setup process.
If you want to shorten URLs, there are literally thousands of plug-and-play solutions.
What else is there?
Hi, I'm one of the founders of Posterous.
Mark, have you used Posterous.com? I'm not sure you fully understand what the service is capable of doing. It's not just basic, dumb email processing.
You can send multiple photos and get an image gallery. Email video or audio (straight from your iPhone) and we'll convert it to be web/iPhone playable automatically. Send us documents and we'll embed them in Scribd, and links expand to embedded players.
So it's not just a matter of "accepting email" as many services claim to do. It's about being smart about it, hosting everything, and taking all the effort out of web publishing. In fact, many wordpress users are switching to us because they're sick of maintaining their site, they would rather focus on the content.
Oh, and then we'll update your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and even Wordpress site for you.
Do you want to setup a family site? Use Posterous and everyone in your family can email post@jonesfamily.posterous.com. They don't even need accounts to publish to the site.
Describing Posterous as just "post by email" which everyone else does doesn't fully encompass our product, features, or ease of use.
You can basically do everything with a blackberry that you can with an iPhone. Does that mean the iPhone can't be the future?
Sachin,
Thanks for responding.
Again, though, many of those features work out of the box on Wordpress. You can send it multiple photos, and Wordpress will create a photo gallery (v2.7, I believe).
Docstoc offers the functionality you describe with Scribd with a basic account, and I'm pretty certain that a two click plug-in is available for Wordpress that works with their API is available as well.
Want to set up a family site? Blogger and Wordpress offer collaborative blogging out of the box, and each user can send to a common or unique email address, again, as a part of the core functionality.
Your analogy between Blackberry's and iPhones is a bit flawed. A corrected version might look like: You can do just about everything with an HTC Touch as you can with an iPhone - the difference is that there's millions more ways to use the iPhone and upgrade the user experience, and the HTC has virtually no developer support and thus limited ways to upgrade the user experience.
It's not that I hate your solution - it's that I don't understand the hype. Why switch from an open and upgradeable solution to a proprietary and SaaS-style solution for the exact same functionality? I wouldn't trade in my iPhone for an HTC touch, so why should I trade in my Wordpress blog for a Posterous blog (as so many seem to be doing)?
Bottom line, I don't get the hype.
How can you knock HTC... Tut tut. Ok, clearly I'm an 'Android/HTC' fan so I'm going to jump in here and say that I think, when you said "You can do just about everything with an HTC Touch as you can with an iPhone - the difference is that there's millions more ways to use the iPhone and upgrade the user experience, and the HTC has virtually no developer support and thus limited ways to upgrade the user experience." you obviously prefer an iPhone over anything by HTC or perhaps with the Android OS...
Have you seen the Android Market? Have you used an Android phone? There are plenty of apps and you can certainly "upgrade the user experience" substantially. As for "HTC has virtually no developer support and thus limited ways to upgrade the user experience", perhaps you haven't been involved much with the Android OS or HTC developer communities but - albeit not as big as the iPhone community - it does exist. Check it out, try one for a while if you get the opportunity. They are getting better with every incarnation of hardware and the software.
The biggest annoyance with the HTC or Android phones is the staggered updates to the OS. There's a lot of phones in the stores and warehouses that have old OS installed and most people don;t know how to update them. So in that respect, the iPhone community wins hands down because of the massive support there is out there.
My last comment is about "hype", I think you said something like "bottom line, I don't get the hype"... That puzzled me really because I don;t think 'Posterous' has had a lot of 'hype'. Lets face it, the Internet is full to the brim of over-hyped this and that but as far as I recall I quietly happened upon Posterous by chance and don't recall ever having read any hyped up BS about it. It's an option for people who want to cross-post, publish simple bits and pieces without having to learn "how to do it". And, it does just that - very nicely.
All the best. PS: Good post though. I like a good debate and it is helped by us all having different opinions. Cheers.
You're screwing with me just to get a rise, right?
What you wrote here is a lot of work for a non-tech -- or for a geek without patience.
Posting via email doesn't work out of the box with Wordpress. You need to add your POP email information. Most people don't know how to do that.
I agree with Sachin. Try it and see.
Actually, it's a lot easier than you're making out - if you go with a self hosted solution, installing Wordpress is simply clicking the "Install Wordpress" button, in most cases (see Bluehost, for example). If you go with Wordpress.com or Blogger.com, email functionality works out of the box as well, with zero set-up, and doesn't take a geek to set up.
I'm not trying to get a rise out of anyone - just trying to break everything down feature for feature.
If you're talking about zero set-up time and ease of use for non-geeks, do the features Sachin describe take zero set-up? Posterous automatically knows where your Flickr and Scribd accounts are?
I was going to try to reply but it's better to hear from the founders. Well said Sachin. I just hit the "like" button
You don't see what the big deal is with Posterous because you're a tech guy. None of this stuff is hard to you. Once you introduce 3 or more steps into the process, the average person will be turned off. Following this post and comments was interesting because you kept adding services and steps that would need to be completed.
With Posterous, you simply send an email. That is it. There is no set up. There is minimal configuration. Setting up auto-posting to other services is brain-dead simple. Ease of use and simplicity without needing any tech knowledge is the key.
By the way, called you "John" because I read this on his Facebook page and assumed he wrote it.
How hard is it to add a URL shortener to Wordpress or Blogger?
If you "hobble that together," you're done.
It's not a lot of work, seriously.
Hah - it happens.
My dad's name is John - I'm pretty used to it, so no worries. :-p
I love posterous, Nice and easy and very clean looking!
I think there are a few reasons, I've blogged about them here http://jonmulholland.posterous.com/my-comment-o... and here http://jonmulholland.posterous.com/my-comment-o... (on my Posterous, of course!).
My feeling is that a new form of blogging is emerging - part sharing/lifestreaming, part writing/observing. Posterous (and Tumblr to a lesser extent) are platforms well built to support this trend.
In particular what sets Posterous apart is it's ability to act as a hub for online activity. It actually is easier to post bookmarks, photos, videos and blogposts directly to it, knowing that they will be onward shared with other communities you participate in. Unlike other services - Tumblr, FriendFeed, even a hacked WordPress set up - it's actually a push platform rather than a lifestream/subscription pull service. Use it as your online 'base' and it works really well.
The email post method shouldn't be discounted either. The way Posterous handles posting by email makes it seriously mobile friendly. I'm not sure any other platform makes it so easy to post an update, article or picture to a blog, at the same time sharing it with favoured social networks, all at the press of one 'Send' button from a mobile phone?
Give it a try!
One word: Utterli.
Friendfeed, Utterli, and increasingly through the use of third party AIR clients, Twitter are all wanting to be the third party push platform you talk about.
Here's the deal with that, though: I'm never going to use a third party push platform that doesn't both have an easy way for me to export my data at will (I refuse to get locked in to anyone) and doesn't have an API.
Posterous fails on both accounts. Friendfeed, Utterli and even Twitter to a certain extent don't fail in this regard.
Not to sound like a broken record, but you want a easily updatable push platform that won't lock your content down like Posterous does, how about Wordpress + P2 + Ping.fm? Again, perhaps about five or six clicks, three radio buttons and a form submit or two, and your done.
You guys are not actually doing the best job convincing a guy that Posterous is that forward thinking, since almost everything being brought up as a selling point can be done with something two to five years old better faster and stronger.
Rah,
That's partly right. I don't see the big deal because I take the time to understand the tech, and realize that most of the things that Posterous does can be done in three steps or less.
You're wrong about Posterous - 80% of the stuff that's being pitched to me here in the comments as "the real reason" I'd use the service *cannot* be used by the email interface - you must log in and set it up.
And there's definitely more than three steps in doing so (setting it up on Posterous, going to the other service it interacts with, setting it up there, coming back and pasting the proper codes)...
... let's all be honest with one another: Posterous has the slickest account set up process we've ever seen. Wordpress doesn't have that. Blogger doesn't have that.
To actually make a usable service, though, you eventually need to log in and go through a bunch of steps certain to annoy geeks and non-geeks alike. And then, when you look at Posterous apples-for-apples, it's just on equal footing with dozens of other services (except for the fact that it's a closed service with no API, and thus doesn't have millions of developers around the world tirelessly working to support it).
Mark, we do have an API. And the API has full export that lets you get your data out. We would never lock you in:
http://posterous.com/api
Mark, do you have an iPhone?
We do have an api:
posterous.com/api
And while you do have to register and setup autopost once, it sure is great to be able to post from home, work, mobile, anywhere from email without having to login to anything or worry about that kind of rich media i can send.
Maybe you tried to setup different services than me (I'm only posting to 7),
but it was as simple as putting in a URL and my username/password. There was
no "pasting of codes" or anything like that. I think Facebook may have the
most complicated setup, but it's still just a bunch of clicking and with FB,
that can't be avoided.
Even assuming WP and friends can be set up to autopost to all these
different services in 3 steps or less, it's still going to be easier for the
average person with Posterous. Less steps.
[...] in July, I had just about hit the absolute limit on the amount of fawning over the Posterous platform I could take, from the likes of Steve Rubel, Robert Scoble and Wayne Sutton. All of them indicated that they [...]