thepete.comOK, first thing’s first, this isn’t quite an Utterz.com Killer–er–I mean an Utterli.com Killer. However, it does have a lot of similar features–so many, in fact, that I may just switch permanently away from Utterli thanks to Posterous.com’s ease of use (so far). It is definitely a nice competitor to Utterli’s features however and a direct threat to miniblogging sites like Tumblr.com and Soup.io, I would think. Since Posterous.com hosts all the media you send to them, Drop.io’s 100 MB limit seems kind of TheSucky (and here I was about to start using http://Drop.io for all of my hosting).
So What Is It?
Here’s what Posterous.com does: they let you blog via email, complete with attachments. This means that you can moblog from your smart phone or just wait until you get home to post via email. Either way, it’s one of the most simple blog tools I’ve ever used.
What Posterous.com Does Right
Posterous is simple. When you sign up, you don’t even sign up. You just send your first post from your email address to “post” @posterous.com and then they send you a confirmation email–however, even before the confirmation email is in your inbox, your post is online. Pretty cool. From there, you click on the link in the email, set a password and then you can change your third-level domain name to whatever you want. Mine is thepete.posterous.com (but was originally “thepete-bwpxa.posterous.com” geh–more on this later).
Posterous cross-posts. With Posterous, you can cross-post everything to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Blogger, your (self-hosted) WordPress, Typepad, or Xanga blogs (or any blog that supports XMLRPC or RSD).
No mission creep. Unlike Utterli.com which tends to try to do too much, Posterous wants to post anything you throw at it and post it as a blog. It doesn’t try to be a discussion site, like Utterli does (poorly, I think).
Basic social networking features are represented. Users can comment on posts and subscribe to fellow-Posterous users (Posterousers?) blogs easily. Like LiveJournal (only with a MUCH more clean interface) you get a friends page, or as Posterous boringly calls it, a “My Subscriptions” page, to keep up with everyone you’re following.
Allows HTML formatting. This may seem minor, but it’s something that always bugged me about Utterli.com and is one of the main reasons I’m liking Posterous.com. I’ve tested blockquotes, italics, bold and href and all work fine.
What Posterous.com Gets Wrong
Nothing. HA! Just kidding. There are a few things Posterous doesn’t do or does poorly.
For starters, they’ve GOT to give us control of formatting for the look of our Posterous blogs (Posterblogs?)–I’m not talking about the absurd level of tweakability that LiveJournal or Blogger gives, but something simple like Twitter allowing a background change or Flickr’s limited number of arrangements for the blog’s layout. Also a way to make the text smaller and use a different font would be great.
Not enough cross-posting. I don’t know what the average number of networks people belong to these days is, but I belong to a lot. Even Utterli.com’s ample cross-posting offerings don’t cover enough bases in my opinion, so Posterous.com’s is going to fall even more short. Sure, it’ll cross-post to ThePete.Com which then uses PingPress.FM to post everywhere else, so I’m covered. However, other folks may not have the same setup as me.
Sidebar control is non-existent. It would be real nice if we could have access to our sidebars so we could add links to blogs written by people who have yet to start blogging on Posterous (should we call them “Pre-Posterous”? ;P ). Also a way to add Google Adsense would be great, too. I’ll never switch away from my self-hosted WordPress install (as much as I’d LOVE to) if there’s no way to add ads. Just seems unfair to provide content with nothing in return but free hosting. Wouldn’t it be great if we made money off of the same web pages?
I like my media on top. Back when Utterli was still Utterz I remember they had a major rev to their site and suddenly media started appearing after the text. This made no sense to me from a design perspective since usually the picture or video is the focus of the post. Why bury it by default? After an email from me and other dedicated users, Utterz put the media on top again and I’m hoping Posterous will see the same light or at least allow us to choose whether we want it on top or on the bottom (hey, to each their own, right?). In the meantime you can edit your post on the Posterous.com site and move the media where ever you want, but that’s a huge PITA if your liveblogging an event on-location.
Why can’t it just start a blog with the username of the email I send from? I mean, really?! When I sent my first post via email I thought “How perfect is this? I can start a new blog, maintain it and don’t ever have to use a computer!”
As I mentioned above, I ended up with thepete-bwpxa.posterous.com. What the hell mess is that? To change it, I had to confirm the email on my laptop, log in, add a password and only then could I make the change. I suppose I could have confirmed everything and tweaked everything via my iPhone, but like all mobile browsing, that would have been another PITA (though a smaller one).
But think how great it would be if you’re on vacation and you want to start a whole blog dedicated to a particular new thing you’ve found while away from home. You don’t have your laptop, but you do have your smart phone. You want to start posting right away, but thanks to your new blog’s domain being a mess, you can’t exactly email all your friends saying “check out my new blog on sailfishing at steve-sdfhfjih.posterous.com!”
How about a nice simple solution to it? Like adding numbers to the email’s user name, just like AOL? Then it’d be “steve123.posterous.com” or something like that.
In the End…
In the end, I’m really keen on Posterous.com. If they’d address my concerns I’d be very likely to switch permanently to them from WordPress. After four years trying to keep sane with a WP blog I am ready for a nice, simple change. But I still want more control (and Google ads). So, while I suspect this will soon be my permanent replacement for Utterli.com (which I have serious interface issues with), it won’t be my dream-blogging tool until they take care of some stuff.
Just my ¥2, as always.
Yes, this blog entry was posted through Posterous.com :)
See? Wouldn’t the pic below be better up top where it’ll catch your eye more?
