Made in Brooklyn
Twitter acquires Posterous and warns of a possible impending shutdown.
I’ve been using Posterous on and off since it launched in 2008. Garry Tan and Sachin Agarwal created a wonderful tool for micro-blogging as well as updating any of your other social media or photo accounts with incredible ease.
It’s not clear how Posterous and Twitter fit together or how this deal is going to end up making sense but it will definitely be interesting to see what they come up with.
I’ve been blogging for around twelve years now. In fact my first “blog” was a hand coded website that had what would eventually be known as a blog style layout. Once Blogger was released I quickly found the joys of publishing content while leaving the coding to others. Eventually I outgrew Blogger and moved on to Typepad. After Typepad I used the Movable Type publishing platform (way before it was Open Source). I stuck with MT for a few years until I discovered WordPress and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Since then I’ve used or at least tested pretty much every platform out there. I still use a few of those regularly aside from my regular blogging. I use Posterous to share my photos and quick thoughts when I’m out and about. My Posterous auto-posts to my Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter so when I do share something everyone I have shared my data with will be able to see what I’m sharing.
If you’re new to blogging and are looking for a way to get started that doesn’t seem overwhelming you’re probably not going to want to jump right into a self-hosted WordPress blog, especially if you have no coding experience. Although there are many hosting companies now days that have one-click installation which does make it much easier to get up and running. Where you may run into trouble though is finding the right look for your site.
The one caveat to all of this is that we are going under the assumption that you’re bootstrapping your new blogging gig. If you’re willing to pay for someone to set up and theme (skin) your site obviously anything is possible. For the purposes of this post we’ll assume you want to be up and blogging while spending as little as possible.
Here’s a quick and by no means definitive list of a few hosted blogging options you may want to check out. SquareSpace, WordPress.com, Posterous, Tumblr and Typepad. All of these platforms allow you to host your blog for free and alias your own domain to your site (i.e. YourDomain.com), and at least some options on free themes for your site. Other than that they all fairly diverse and your likes and dislikes for each will be subjective.
Hint: Do Google searches to compare two platforms like Tumblr vs. Posterous.
Still, if you’re like me and stubborn or really really want complete control over your site you can sign up for hosting and host your own blog. If you go this route I highly recommend using WordPress as your platform of choice. It’s open source and has a great community of supporters that create themes and plugins to help enhance your site. You can also check out my post on How to Beef Up Your WordPress Install in Five Easy Steps or even do a search for WordPress plugins and see what you come up with.
What do you think? Have you tried any of the platforms mentioned? Do you have any advice for new bloggers? Share your experience in the comments section. If you’ve recently started a blog and would like some feedback leave a link in the comments section as well.
It’s not really a secret that I have my own personal and somewhat creepy love affair with Posterous. I’m pretty much stunned each day that I don’t get some sort of restraining order from them in the mail, so, of course, I can only assume that the feelings are mutual. I even tried to get Posterous and WordPress drunk and make sweet little blogging babies, but alas, my plans were thwarted.
All that being said, I still maintain that if you run a WordPress blog there is no better companion than Posterous to handle your mobile publishing needs. If you want to share a quick photo, a gallery of photos, videos or even voice clips, Posterous does a wonderful job of not only posting them, but sharing them practically anywhere on the web you want to be seen, including your WordPress blog.
With dozens of themes to choose from and the ability to customize each of them you’re bound to find a look for your Posterous site that makes you happy. However, if you’re not very comfortable getting in and messing around in the code then something as basic as changing your favicon on your Posterous site can seem a bit daunting. The truth is, it’s actually a pretty simple tweak.
Find out how after the jump:
[Read more...]
Posterous finally jumped on board the app train today with the release of their new Posterous app. Their previous app PicPosterous wasn’t nearly as robust as this and I’m pretty sure the guys over at Posterous knew they’d be better off starting from the ground up with a totally new app and that’s exactly what they did.
All in all the app is a huge improvement and makes it incredibly easy to manage and maintain your Posterous site from your iPhone. On the other hand, Posterous is so damn good at handling posts by mailing them in I’m not sure I see this app as completely replacing that method on the iPhone.
The two places this app will come in really handy is if you have a post you want to make private or for some reason don’t want to have it autopost everywhere you can easily manage that with the app. The other huge plus is the ability to upload videos straight through the app. If you’re using an iPhone 4 and taking HD video you’re going to find that you’ll quickly run into a size issue when trying to email it to your Posterous blog. This app, theoretically, allows you to upload videos of any size while continuing to run in the background. That feature alone in this app should quickly make Posterous a serious player in hosting and sharing mobile HD videos online. I for one can’t wait to give it a shot.
Click after the jump to see a more in depth video tour of all the features in the new Posterous app.
Just in case there’s anyone out there who’s still on the fence about it I decided to go ahead and write the 879th Tumblr vs. Posterous review on the web.
To be honest, the only difference between this review and all the others you might read, is that I wrote this one. That means you have a 100% guarantee that this particular review comes straight from the mind of a man who’s own mother said of him as a child that he was, “too smart for his own good”. Too smart?! Wow, that sounds like a rave review to me.
I’ve been blogging on WordPress for over five years and recommend it as a blogging/CMS platform of choice to clients and friends alike. As I was making the decision to move my personal blog away from WordPress, so I can work less on the behind the scenes development (themes, plugins, upgrades and such) and focus more on the content, Posterous and Tumblr were the two platforms at the top of my list. As much as I love WordPress and building sites with it, I’m not a fan of WordPress.com for some reason.
Since part of my job is being on the cutting edge of technology, I already had Tumblr and Posterous sites set up, so it was just a matter of getting them to a place, aesthetically at least, that I would feel comfortable using one of them as my full-time setup.
Another caveat to my experiment was that each theme had to be basically default themes. It would defeat the purpose if I had to constantly be futzing around with the theme every time a new feature was introduced to the platform. Once I chose the two themes I could live with I started conducting my own little focus group.
If you know me, one thing you know is that I am a sucker for focus groups. I want to hear what people like about a product and why. I want to get inside their heads and know why they’re making tat choice.
Pretty much without exception Tumblr was the favorite as far as looks go. As the saying goes, “you only get one chance to make a first impression”. I’ve said it over and over that it doesn’t matter how good your content is, if someone visits your site and it looks like shit or it’s cluttered and hard to figure out, that may well be the last time that person visits your site.
Right now there are pros and cons to each platform that, depending on what you’re looking for, could sway you either way.
Tumblr:
Posterous:
So there you have it. A little insight on why I decided to make the switch to Tumblr and start focusing more on my content and less on my code. I don’t have to worry about whether or not my site is properly load balanced to handle spikes in traffic. That’s the team at Tumblr’s job.
That’s it, sit back and enjoy. If you have any questions or comments drop me an email or submit a tip at the top of the page.
One of the first things you need to do once you’ve decided that you want to become a kick ass, famous blogger that can change the world with a few keystrokes is to decide what type of platform you your blog to be built on. No matter who you are, or how big or small your audience will be initially, everyone has to make this decision before they begin.
First, let’s start off with some basic definitions so that we’re clear on what we’re talking about.
Choosing a self-hosted blog means that you, not the blogging company, will be taking care of hosting your site. If you choose to go with a self-hosted blog you’ll need to make a few more decisions like which platform to use and where to host it. As far as the choice of platform goes, for the purpose of this post, I’ll only be dealing with WordPress.org. For hosting, that’s up to you. You’ll need to start off with a simple hosting package from some place like GoDaddy (affiliate link) or Bluehost.
While a self-hosted blog gives you the most flexibility to what you want with your blog, it also means that you, or someone you hire, will be responsible for virtually every aspect of you site. Fortunately WordPress now has an automatic update feature so when a new version is released all you need to do is click a link that shows up at the top of your dashboard and the update will be handled for you. Installation shouldn’t be an issue either considering virtually every hosting provider worth its salt (certainly the two mentioned above) have one-click installs of WordPress that handle everything from the database creation to populating the initial files for you.
Hosted blogging platforms do one thing spectacularly. They let you focus solely on content. Once your site is set up you never have to worry about what’s going on in the background, upgrades and general maintenance is taken care by the blogging platform itself.
If you’re looking for a hosted blogging solution you’re going to need to do a lot more research to find out which one of these is right for you. Don’t be afraid to sign up for an account and play around with the dashboard of each and see which one you’re more comfortable with. Even Typepad, which is the only service that charges, has a 30-day free trial so you can get in there and see what it’s like.
This is by no means a complete list of every blogging platform out there. These are just a few that I’ve had a good deal of experience with and would feel comfortable recommending to someone who asked my opinion.
I’ve been a huge fan of Posterous since it first launched back in 2008. I wrote a post here detailing my dry run using Posterous as my full-time blog.
Since I wrote that post there have been a few major developments over at the Posterous camp. Perhaps the most profound change has been the opening up of the CSS for Posterous to allow you to change your theme or completely customize it yourself from the ground up.
I’m still not sold that Posterous is powerful enough that I would feel completely confident in moving there full-time again, but they are definitely making some exciting headway. Two of the most recent announcements I’ve been really excited about are the Flickr integration:
Just paste the URL, e.g. from the address bar:
into a post or an email, and you’ll automatically get the Flickr embedded slideshow, shown below.
and the Retweet functionality built into default themes.
First you’ll need to go into your customize panel and activate the retweet button.
Once you’ve done that you should see the retweets showing up on all of your posts. Not only your future posts but past posts as well. The implementation is top-notch as well. You don’t even have to leave the blogs comment page to retweet a post.
The co-founders of Posterous have been giving the impression that there are a lot of cool new features coming down the pipes over the next few months. If one of those improvements is a more powerful web dashboard for publishing posts, I may be chomping at the bits to get over to Posterous full-time once and for all. Right now I’m still extremely excited to watch the changes unfold on my mobile blog jamespoling.mobi.
Back in July I got word from the guys over at Posterous that they were hard at work on an iPhone app that would make posting video from your iPhone 3G S wonderfully simple. They did not disappoint. PicPosterous is by far the best media app I’ve used to publish photos and videos from my iPhone.
After much anticipation Posterous has finally added the ability to add themes to your Posterous site. Initially there are four new themes to choose from but I’m sure there will be more to follow. What’s even more exciting than the four new theme options is that they have also opened up the the HTML/CSS code to allow you to create your own Posterous theme from scratch. This will no doubt create an instant demand for quality custom Posterous themes for people to beef up their sites. This also allows people, for the first time to actually brand their Posterous site with their own company brand. This should be huge in the growth of Posterous.
Yesterday I wrote about YouTube’s current dominance as the iPhone video hosting place of choice simply because you can upload videos straight from your phone and not be hindered by the relatively small file size restrictions on email attachments. I also mentioned that Vimeo publicly admitted to not having the resources to develop an iPhone app. I think this is a mistake that Vimeo will ultimately correct or regret, I’m not sure which.
YouTube’s dominant position may not last for long if a couple of other companies have their say. Qik and Posterous are both working on iPhone apps that will allow you to upload much longer video straight from your iPhone.
What will the two apps be offering? We heard back from both of them today. Someone inside Qik and from Sachin, one of the founders of Posterous and here are their responses.
Qik: “There is no limit to the total number of videos you can upload to Qik.com. There is a limit of 2 hours to the length of the video that you can upload.”
Posterous: “We are working on a photo uploading app now, and we’ll add video to it after we release the initial version. This should allow full res, long uploads to posterous.”
All I can say is, wow! The thought of streaming up to two hours of live video on the iPhone is a pretty exciting concept. Qik is already available on jailbroken iPhones but they do have an app in beta so let’s hope that Apple gives it the thumbs up for the App Store.
As exciting as two hours of streaming video is I’m almost more excited about the Posterous app. The Posterous app promises not only to allow you “long uploads” but Posterous will also post/publish your videos everywhere for you. This will allow you to take video on your iPhone, upload it to Posterous and have it posted to your blog, Twitter feed, Facebook account, Vimeo account AND YouTube. Posterous and iPhone have the potential to unleash live video greatness upon the web.
Hopefully we’ll here more soon about one of these apps being released into the App Store.
As I’ve said before, if I had my way, WordPress and Posterous would marry each other and have beautiful blogging babies. Though, as much as I’d like to see that happen, it seems clear that Posterous seems quite happy to keep its independence and be the hot, young upstart, so I’m also not holding my breath on any acquisitions or mergers any time soon.
I’ve been using Posterous exclusively for the past week or so and I can definitively say that there is no better mobile publishing platform out there. Simplicity and ease of use is the key to Posterous’ success. They took what used to be a convoluted, messy task and turned it into something so simple it’s beautiful. It’s hard for me to imagine not using Posterous on an almost daily basis now. The simple fact is, why not? It’s too easy not to use.
Posterous not only takes whatever media you send it (photos, audio recording, videos, documents) pretty much anything you can think of, and packages it nicely into a a gallery, video or audio player. It will also automatically post to whatever sites you’ve set up, from Facebook to Twitter to Flickr, Picasa of Vimeo, your content will find it’s place to the right spot.
Make no mistake, Posterous is still a work in progress. What it makes up for in mobile publishing it lacks in web publishing, but web publishing is not the “hair-on-fire” problem that Posterous set out to address so it’s not all that surprising that they’re still behind in that category.
I can’t say enough about Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan, the co-founders of Posterous. It’s obvious that both of them are very passionate about what they’ve created and are determined to see it succeed. Garry and Sachin are still very hands on and extremely helpful when it comes to developing your site on Posterous. Often an email to support@posterous.com will be followed up by one of them directly.
Posterous will always be my mobile publishing platform. In fact I registered jamespoling.mobi and have it aliased to my Posterous (a free tool that Posterous provides its users).
Posterous allows you to have up to three sites associated with one account. Right now, my biggest gripe with the actual functionality of Posterous is that you cannot control on a granular level where each of those sites posts to. Right now your “post to everywhere” options are based on accounts, not on sites within those accounts. The good news is I’ve been assured by Garry that is definitely on their feature list and something they are working hard on.
My other beefs with Posterous are, as previously mentioned, a very weak web publishing experience, and the inability to customize your css or skin/theme your site. I’m sure all of these things are on Posterous’ radar. They’ve been adding features at a blistering pace and recently added the ability to import your current blog into Posterous. That is a clear shot across the bow of every other blogging platform out there that Posterous isn’t going to be content to be “just” a mobile publishing platform.
For now I’ve developed a compromise of sorts. Publishing on Posterous full-time right now isn’t an option for me. There are just too many key features/customizations not currently available.
In lieu of having Posterous publish straight into my blog, which can create content issues since the content that ends up on your site looks nothing like the clean, gallery or player that you’re used to on Posterous, I’m using a Posterous widget embedded into my sidebar which will show my latest content.
Speaking of which, that’s one other custom feature that Posterous is missing. Strong, embeddable widgets. Posterous relies on a third party company to provide it’s widgets and unless you’re willing to dole out a few bucks a month be prepared to have ads and a credit button attached to your widget. I’m not sure if this is a business decision but it seems obtuse to most other ideals that Posterous puts forward. I hope they resolve this issue soon.
If you’ve been waiting for a dead simple and convenient way to start publishing on the go, there’s no reason for you to be waiting anymore. You don’t even have to go to the Posterous to sign up. Just send an email to post@posterous.com and they’ll lead you through the rest.
If you could take Posterous’ ability to easily publish any type of media via email and marry it with WordPress’ proven track record with CMS/blogging you would have one seriously beautiful website.
If you added Posterous’ functionality to the your WordPress blog you would literally never need to post anywhere else ever again.
Yes, I know that Posterous can currently publish to your blog, but much of the full content forces you to link back to Posterous and rightly so, but that’s not the point I’m making.
If WordPress could build on Posterous’ amazing ability to publish media on the fly and if Posterous could build on WordPress’ amazing open source community and themes they would make one seriously sexy publishing platform.
What do you say guys? Anyone want to come over and have drinks at my place?
Posted via web from James Poling
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