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Category: Technology Author : Duncan Riley Posted: July 30, 2008
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Posterous grasping at straws?

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Tumblr competitor Posterous has announced support for reposting to blogs including Blogger, WordPress and any blog that supports the MetaWebLog API and Really Simple Discovery API. This feature comes in addition to existing support for posting to Flickr and Twitter.

The forwarding support also allows users to select which services they want their entries posted to, according to MG Seigler at Venturebeat. For example, if you wanted a picture posted to Flickr you would email flickr, Tumblr: tumblr etc.

I am a Posterous fan, and I use my Posterous blog to post interesting emails (link) that I want to share without writing a post. The addition of forwarding is a handy value add, but it doesn’t make immediate business sense. Posterous is, at its core, a hosted blogging service with a focus on ease of use via email. As a hosted blogging service its number one business goal is to build page views by encouraging people to use Posterous as a primary, or significant secondary blogging destination. By facilitating forwarding to other services, Posterous becomes an appealing intermediary to other services, but it does little to focus attention on the Posterous site. By allowing users to post to other blogs, it allows users to benefit from the easy to use Posterous posting service without ever having to visit their Posterous blog, and subsequently to share links to posted items with others. Where exactly is there a business model in that?

Of course I could be unkind and suggest that this is a content ploy with a focus on search engines. Every Posterous post forwarded to another blog is still added as an entry on Posterous, even if the blogger themselves never links to nor visits their Posterous blog. Offering this service should encourage more people to use Posterous (at least that’s what Posterous will be betting), and that can only increase the volume of content hosted, and it’s well known that the more content you have, the more traffic you usually get from Google.

Perhaps Posterous is hoping that people will switch to using their Posterous blogs after they try it as a forwarding service? Not impossible, but a risky bet.

Is Posterous grasping at straws, trying to find some way, any way of increasing their user base more rapidly? The traffic is headed in the right direction, which is why this makes even less sense from a business perspective; they would appear to be on a good thing and going well now.

Posterous


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Viewing 4 Comments

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    Hey Duncan,

    Thanks for your mention on inquisitr, again! And we're delighted to have you as a user too.

    Sachin and I have been talking for some time about building a service that we ourselves would use. We want to do the things that most other blog platforms don't think to do-- things that are useful and solve problems for people. Paul Graham talks at length about this in his essay, Be Good (http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html). And what this means is building features that are just good and useful for our users, almost in the face of what conventional wisdom would dictate a self-interested rational actor would do.

    Here's an example -- why is it that sites like Facebook don't always do comment-replies by email? Replying to an email is the natural response to an email notification about a comment. Either it's hard for them to understand SMTP (something I highly doubt), or they want to drive pageviews and traffic to their websites. At the core of that sort of attitude is not being good -- it's blowing off a no-brainer great feature that users would love just game the system and to juice numbers.

    Another example -- we provide zip downloads of content if the user wants to provide it to their friends. If I upload 20 photos of a great day out in SF with family, I want my friends and family to be able to download that content and do whatever they want with it. It's my content, right? Again, we see that most other websites work like heck to prevent people from getting access to their own data like that. You'll be loathe to see a "download this gallery" link from anywhere. Again, to juice the system, and get people coming back.

    We don't play that way because we don't think the game should be played that way. What we find is that you can't expect people to switch to posterous overnight. In fact, people have communities built around what they're doing already. We don't believe in forcing you to switch because we want you to stay connected everywhere. I want that, wouldn't you? Whenever you switch services, it's kind of like forcing you to move to a different island. You have to say goodbye to your friends, and that's not being good.

    When it comes to being an open provider of a service to all blog platforms, we think it boils down to solving a burning problem that we all face -- that we all find ourselves at one point or another uploading or posting to multiple services. This is just dumb. Use posterous and it's a no-brainer -- one email attachment and you're done.

    If we can be useful to someone right now, today, then we want to be useful for them. And they'll tell their non-blogging friends too, so we can get experienced bloggers AND expand the blogging space with first-time bloggers at the same time.

    Finally, we're working hard to get better every single day... so at some point, it'll be crazy for you not to switch. =)

    Thanks for reading a long response, and for using posterous!
    -Garry, cofounder, posterous.com

    PS, My cofounder Sachin also blogged about this on his posterous prior to the article but everything he says is totally applicable: Why we did it (http://sachin.posterous.com/autopost-to-everyth...)
    • ^
    • v
    I'm a sucker for idealism, and I like the outlook above. "Be Good"... It's like a positive spinoff of Goog's "don't be evil".

    I don't really use twitter, and I never saw the value in it from the start - when your scoble or laporte sure, but for the rest of folks theres just a lot of minutiae mostly.

    Posterouson the other hand, I've already picked up and I like its features - I haven't gotten much use out of it yet, but I have plans for it. I like what your doing, and I like being inspired by people with vision. It sounds like Garry and Sachin have it.
    • ^
    • v
    Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I'd say Posterous is smart to stick to building one feature- email posting. This update attempts to drive the same rich content to other sites via email submission? That's a value add. Every feature is a portfolio item with a one-track mind. MT, Blogger and WP all have better plug-ins, widgets, editors, templates, and sidebars. Posterous would be crazy to try to be the newest and greatest blog platform. Instead they are building a the greatest "email submission interpreter"... hoping someone will buy it. Exit and out. Seems straight forward.

    My beef is that Blogger and others still have richer email experience in some ways, since you can send to a unique "To" address, thus not limiting your posts to one Blogger account per email address.
    • ^
    • v
    What posterous needs to do right now, is to let the users customize their themes. Right now every posterous blog look the same. This is probably one reason why many users stick with Tumblr instead.

    But I think they will add the custom design feature as a "Pro" feature...

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  • July 30, 2008 at 6:01 pm Duncan Riley
    I don't get the forwarding to other blogs as a business model, unless that model is to drive search engine traffic. It certainly doesn't focus on Posterous as a destination
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:02 pm Rob Diana
    Isn't evolution of the service part of the game? Being a gateway is not a bad position and the mail to blog posts is a fantastic feature.
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:13 pm .LAG
    @rob agree on the email feature; i'm seeing a lot of people in my co. struggle with what I think is a really simple blogging interface... but if they could just email things in -- because everyone can use email -- i think that would solve tons of problems.
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:23 pm Roger Kondrat
    @Duncan Im not following you.There are so many businesses based on what you are calling 'grasping @ straws'. Read your article & although you have a fair point you are making more of it than there is (big surprise) in reality.Ping.fm is doing this, is their model poor? Is Posterous changing their business model?Maybe. Posterous needs to grow & they need exposure, this could be a good way of doing it.Also most Internet users read, never follow and especially never write so Posterous may get their eyeballs
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:28 pm Duncan Riley
    Roger, I hit Ping.fm to use it. I don't have to hit Posterous to use it, and if I forward stuff I won't even be sharing links to the service. If you're giving people a reason to never visit the service, either when creating content or reading it (and I'd note the difference with Twitter is that you still pull data from Twitter, so there is some interaction there), and the service is free, where's the business model? You can't sell ads...unless you start adding them to posts, but most wouldn't stand for it
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:29 pm Duncan Riley
    Utterz has the same problem. I love Utterz as a service, but the business model when you become nothing more than an intermediary is weak. And it's not as though people will pay for it unless there are no alternatives. TubeMogul has a premium service for example, and their competitors all charge, but that's a compelling use case in terms of being the intermediary
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:29 pm Chris Brogan
    So, know how FF is like our display console to all our schtuff? What if Posterous becomes something more like Twhirl, only way more nuanced, and starting with email, but leading into several other gateways. It'd be like ping.fm and all those other things, too. Ish.
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:30 pm Rahsheen Porter
    You actually never have to touch Ping.fm to use it. You can post via email. You can even pick where to post to and what type of post to make. Without ever touching the site. Maybe Posterous wants to be a better Ping.fm/Hellotxt.
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:31 pm Roger Kondrat
    How is this different than Ping.fm? I don't linger there either but they and many others see a business model. Also at least Posterous has a chance with their sight having a copy of your content. You are assuming users will care between your stuff and Posterous and I am not convinced users give a damn. Whichever comes up first in Google Wins.
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:33 pm Duncan Riley
    Chris, unless they can make a case out of stuffing ads into the reply email you get, I can't see it. Twhirl is an interface in its own right, with some hard challenges to monetize, but it has eyeballs to eventually try. Posterous is email as the interface..I just cant see how you'd monetize it or make a business out of it, unless it's a Twitter style flip or flop play
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:33 pm Roger Kondrat
    @Chris you are making sense. I could go along with that. If I was in their shoes I think you would have my attention.
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:35 pm Duncan Riley
    Roger, definitely could be a Google play as I noted in the post. Different to Ping.fm: easy, most people still hit Ping.fm to make entries, they have actual eyeballs (although I do note that Ping.fm is starting to appear in 3rd party apps). Posterous is focused on email...the whole selling point is you don't have to hit the site to create a post. There's no eyeballs in creation.
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:36 pm Duncan Riley
    I suspect that they're pursuing a grow it as quickly as possible strategy and intend on working the rest out later. Risky, but it doesn't always fail
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:51 pm Roger Kondrat
    @Duncan yeah for sure I would say they are making this move so they can grow their service quickly. But don't underestimate how many regular internet users could read the content they 'borrow' from you when you would use their service to forward on to your blog... Its tough, I am definitely curious how they will work out.
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:52 pm Garry Tan
    Hey Duncan and friends. Just posted at length on the blog post itself, but then forgot that FriendFeed adds yet another comment stream too. =) Re: ping.fm /hellotxt -- do they host your files? We haven't had the time to try them, but my guess is no. They're just a pipe. Posterous hosts everything and makes posting rich media brain dead simple. In addition, you also get a posterous blog address too. We're going back to focus on blog features, so that blog is just going to get better with time. Thanks all!
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:54 pm .LAG
    @chris that 'posterous becomes more like twhirl' idea is pretty profound i think
  • July 30, 2008 at 7:01 pm Edwin Khodabakchian
    duncan: do you know if they have raised any money?
  • July 30, 2008 at 7:02 pm Roger Kondrat
    @lag @Chris once you take @chris's thought forward one may consider posterous as an excellent cross-platform version of Twhirl and I wonder what would happen to their blog and transmission tools if they made a good mobile version... Thoughts?
  • July 30, 2008 at 7:30 pm .LAG
    @roger interesting question. when I walk around my (brand consulting firm's) office -- the one app that is open on almost everyone's screen is: E-mail. Be they consultant, designer, finance, facilities. it seems to me like everyone knows how to use email. so whatever the future of "regular" users getting into this self-publishing/social media schtick, if there's a way for them to do it via email, that's a HUGE win...and that would apply to mobile, because the E-mail ui and experience is still the same.

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