Like many of you, I've become fascinated with Posterous, a new blog publishing tool that fits somewhere between Twitter and a regular, more traditional, long-form blog. At least, that's where I think it finds its sweet spot. Obviously, I'm not alone in that presumption. As you can see from the screen shot, Damien Basile thinks so too. His quote, "Posterous, for those times when blogging is too much & tweeting is too little," would make a nice company slogan.
If you don't mind me harkening back to blogging's good old days, you know, before Facebook and Twitter existed, when all we had was our blog, many of us posted everything there. Our blog served as an "online journal or diary" chronicling not only our business-related thoughts and ideas, but more personal, anecdotal information as well.
In 2006, Twitter came along and relieved our blog from carrying some of that burden. Still, the micro-blog wasn't suitable for everything and, by then, traditional blogs were morphing into more topically-specific, long-form posts, which were for many, very article-like in their conception.
That's where Posterous comes in. It's the "everything else" blog. At least, that's how I'm using it. Want to post some ad hoc image you captured on your iPhone? You can do it. See a blog post, article or video that you think you're readers would appreciate but that doesn't synch well with your main blog? Put it on Posterous. Using the bookmarklet, you can even scrape content by highlighting it with your mouse, then add some commentary of your own as need be. Posterous always provides a link back to the source too.
Not only that, thanks to the easy subscription option, Posterous allows its users to build a community of other Posterous blogs around themselves. But, you don't even have to be a registered user to post. Simply send an email containing text and links to photos or other media to post@posterous.com and the platform will send you back a link to it.
That's another thing. You can post from email! In fact, that's the option that Posterous seems to prefer. (That's the option I'm using to post this message.) There is a web-based posting interface, but it's kind of lame when compared to the likes of Typepad or WordPress.
Finally, something I like (sorta like anyway) is the autopost feature that permits the post to be sent to Twitter, Facebook or another blog. (I'm allowing that with this post as well.)
Posterous is not lifestreaming in the same sense as Friendfeed, though it does fit that genre. For me, it's more of a life saver, the place I post when, to quote Damien, "blogging is too much and tweeting is too little." Reminds me of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in fact. Poppa Bear's bed is too hard. Momma Bear's bed is too soft; Baby Bear's bed is just right. Same can be said for Posterous too! For some things, it's the "just right" blogging platform.
Want to know more? Check out their FAQs.
Here's a nice guide from Mashable on how to get the most from your Posterous blog.
I really like Posterous for the creative personal outlet. I have had a Professional blog for several years, but I didn't like to put too much personal, off topic, etc. content on it and I really didn't have the time to create an "everything else" blog to do so. Posterous has taken away the excuse. Set up is dead simple as is posting and sharing. I love the book marklet when I run across a photo or video I find interesting. It is a great outlet for the real "us" that might be a little more off topic than our "professional" blogs.
Posted by: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=604407761 | November 01, 2009 at 05:01 PM
Agreed. It's a nice "compromise." :-)
Posted by: Paul Chaney | November 02, 2009 at 09:27 AM
My favorite social media tool is Twitter, because it encourages brevity AND conversation, which is hard to find in one package. But there's an art to using Twitter well, especially if you're tweeting as the voice of a business or brand.
Posted by: dsi r4 | November 19, 2009 at 08:28 AM