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.

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."

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.

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.

http://posterous.com/api

Mark, do you have an iPhone?

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).

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.

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!