Posterous will turn off on April 30

To be totally honest, I'm surprised it's taken this long.<p><i>Everyone</i> knew a year ago when they were acquihired that Posterous would be discontinued. Why do I say this? Well, Twitter's bread and butter is in 140 characters, if they wanted to look at branching out into micro-blogging they wouldn't need to acquire a company, of whom the majority of their customers already use Twitter. (It was borderline a zero-value gain for Twitter if you take out Posterous' talent)<p>As it stands now, Tumblr clearly won (Although there has been a few emerging startups of insignificant size. Soup.io is one that springs to mind that is currently in an accelerator). If you are looking for hosted solutions for your startup's blog (or you are at all technical), I'd <i>genuinely</i> think about using GitHub. Start to pull your posts from Posterous and use a static content generator. Jekyll / Punch / Middleman / Hyde / Korma / nanonc / Frank + (any of the other 10 static generators)..<p>The operative point from using services that generate static content is that you are <i>always</i> in control of your plain-text content. Just push your new post and GitHub will handle your site. If you are worried about traffic on your site or extended build periods (I believe GH does rate limit static sites, and as a comment below mentions, on infrequent occasions builds can take upwards of several hours) then you can still use any other solution... Push to Amazon S3 and proxy through Cloudfront, then you will have probably one of the fastest, geographically distributed blogs on the internet.<p>This was always happening... Especially when you consider that for the last 12 months I haven't seen a single new feature since they were acquired. I've logged in, see the same "Posterous has been acquired" header for the last 12 months.<p>Move on, and safeguard your future content.

Obligatory link to "Posterous launches new tools to switch from dying platforms: A new importer per day for the next 15 days"<p><a href="http://blog.posterous.com/make-the-switch-to-posterous" rel="nofollow">http://blog.posterous.com/make-the-switch-to-posterous</a>

Can somebody please help me out? I'm confused here. I thought Posterous (before being acquired by Twitter) was doing quite well and was seen as the biggest competitor to Tumbler. It would seem that Posterous had a ton of users (would love to know details) and that they could monetize those users fairly simply through display ads. So, with a ton of users creating content and even more viewing that content, I would imagine it to be a pretty good business model.<p>What confuses me is that rumor has it that Posterous was sold for $10m. I really don't understand that. That basically is treating all of posterous.com users/content as worthless, and just buying the team. And it appears that Twitter did think like that (considering that posterous.com is shutting down).<p>But my question is how many users did posterous have? What was their traffic like? Were they doing well, or were they a sinking ship and thus they sold? Or did Twitter offer much more than $10m (maybe stock options worth 30-40m more?)?<p>I'd like to know because I think it would be helpful for startups to understand this space (blogging, content creation) and what kind of business models work and what kind of traffic is needed to make a successful business.<p>So, if there is anybody with inside knowledge on this stuff, please speak up. I'd also love to hear directly from the Posterous co-founders. Please share your experiences.

The handwriting was on the wall for this when Posterous built data export: <a href="http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/12/28/twitter-own-posterous-finally-lets-users-to-back-up-their-data-will-it-now-close-down-in-2013/" rel="nofollow">http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/12/28/twitter-own-postero...</a><p>I do give them a lot of credit for providing a means to export data (albeit a somewhat clunky one), because way too many services simply shut down without providing a reasonable way to get your data out.<p>Will also be interesting to see what the "key initiatives" that Posterous will be doing at Twitter are: <a href="http://blog.twitter.com/2012/03/welcoming-posterous-team-to-flock.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.twitter.com/2012/03/welcoming-posterous-team-to-...</a>

&#62; <i>We’d like to thank the millions of Posterous users who have supported us on our incredible journey.</i><p>Yeah, right.<p>How was that "incredible", BTW? I feel I've read that same story many many times.<p>As a Posterous user, I'm so glad I used my own domain.

As a product I was always impressed by the just email, no setup approach.<p>With the current trend towards people posting one-off or irregular essays instead of full-featured blogs, it seems as if they veered away from the simple email posting route too soon.<p>What was once an interesting approach to blogging was pivoted into a samey metaservice with nothing notable for me.

This is yet another reminder of how important it is to own your content, and why a blog is best hosted at a domain you control.

This has only been mentioned once in the thread, but if Jekyll seems like too much work to setup, I highly, highly recommend Octopress:<p><a href="http://octopress.org/" rel="nofollow">http://octopress.org/</a><p>It's based off of Jekyll but handles a lot of the boilerplate, including rake tasks to deploy to Github pages. I've been following the github/octopress project for awhile and have seen a lot of activity in the past few weeks, so hopefully version 2.1 is just around the corner.<p>edit: Also, as a Tumblr user (for my photoblog), I would not recommend using Tumblr for those who are into technical/indepth writing. The set of HTML you can use is limited...for example, I don't think tables are allowed. Its social network of sharing is also more suited toward visual blogs, not ones of deep content.

These sort of shenanigans make me wary of using <i>any</i> service that has raised a considerable amount of external funding. Believe it or not, VCs (as opposed to angels) are only in it to get a good return. This frequently forces companies to sell out at the detriment to their customers (given the lack of IPOs as a viable exit option). I get that the founders are in it to make money as well, but don't expect anyone to use your service knowing well that you could just <i>choose</i> to sell out tomorrow.<p>I wonder if we studied funded start ups over the last 10 years, whether we'll see a pattern of selling out and then discontinuing service.

I really dislike that startups are acquired so often just so they are discontinued by larger companies. It feels very disingenuous. As if the only point is to be acquired and get a sizable amount of money.

Services that don't get traction shutdown. Services that get traction and become successful eventually shutdown anyway. I wonder whats the point of investing my time in a free service.

Not a surprise. I saw posterous as a better option for Tumblr, but after they create the "spaces" version I felt like lost. The original idea it was simple and worked, but after they got traction I think they lost the vision, and after twitter bought them they totally mess up. Well, good luck at twitter.

When Posterous emerged I had high hopes for it. My first post was quite enthusiastic.<p><a href="http://przemoc.posterous.com/rouse-e-by-post-ie-why-i-am-here-at-posterous" rel="nofollow">http://przemoc.posterous.com/rouse-e-by-post-ie-why-i-am-her...</a><p>But I quickly understood that their service wasn't meant to improve at all. Every problem I reported to them was dismissed (directly or indirectly). So I created following page to warn the others.<p><a href="http://faulty.posterous.com/" rel="nofollow">http://faulty.posterous.com/</a><p>I thought about the idea of posting via (plain-text) mail seriously, but they weren't sharing my mindset.<p>I left posterous long time ago (well, my CNAME still points there, have to fix it...) and I see it was a wise decision.<p>Rule #0 of the internet: you have to constantly backup it!

Posterous might not have been as big as Tumblr, but it was big. It was obvious it's management had some lack of vision, since introducing Spaces and other confusing additions.<p>Even with all this, it is completely confusing to me seeing it sold to Twitter and just shutting down service.<p>I personally will not believe to use any service made by those guys, especially Posthaven looks ridiculous in light of how Posterous got miss-managed.<p>Having said all this, I am not judging founders for selling out, I think they did a good thing and it is their absolutely their right, probably could've gotten way more from someone else, but it's their decision, as online user, I just can't touch anything they make.

&#62;&#62; If you want to move your site to another service, WordPress and Squarespace offer importers that can move all of your content over to either service. Just remember: you need to back up your Spaces by April 30.<p>Oh the irony. Karma's a bitch, huh?

I went the static site route (shout out to Blogofile (<a href="http://www.blogofile.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.blogofile.com</a>) because I didn't trust anyone but me to run my server and I got tired of running Wordpress and Drupal myself. I paid NearlyFreeSpeech.NET $20 a year ago to host the static files and have about half that still credited to my account.<p>OK, it's not for everyone. Initial setup certainly wasn't for the faint of heart. But it was fun and replacing my host is as easy as finding another cheap host for text files and jpegs. It was worth it to me.

anybody looking to offload Posterous blog into Tumblr - try <a href="http://www.import2.com/tumblr" rel="nofollow">http://www.import2.com/tumblr</a>

Any solid alternatives HN could recommend?

Nooooo! Why so many simple useful products, that I would be happy to pay for are simple closed after aquihires.<p>I know that this may be good for founders, but it let me against trying new companies which doesn't have a clear monetization strategy.

Is it possible to get a backup of the YC posterous.. or are they moving it?

They should probably update this header:<p><i>This is where we post about new features on Posterous Spaces. You can get a Posterous Space just like this by emailing post@posterous.com or signing up for a new account.</i>

This is probably one of those times when we can thank the Internet Archive for preserving the internet that's no longer with us, or, in this case, the part of the internet that's about to go dark.

Regardless of where you physically host your blog, or email, or other service, use your own domain name. That way acquisitions don't matter for your readers and correspondence, just move and no one's the wiser.

If I Was CEO of Posterous (written in 2010) <a href="http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/06/if-i-was-ceo-of-posterous/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/06/if-i-was-ceo-of-posterou...</a>

Simple solution for developers who are bloggers <a href="https://substancehq.com/" rel="nofollow">https://substancehq.com/</a>

I'd suspected as much based on the decline in performance and the vanishing of the previously wonderful customer support.

Nooooooooo. My blog! <a href="http://blog.jmoz.co.uk" rel="nofollow">http://blog.jmoz.co.uk</a><p>Best replacement, wordpress?<p>Need to 301 everything :/

Any wisdom on how to import posterous content into tumblr? Posterous's auto post is not working for me anymore.

Wow, I never saw that coming :(

true dat, it was just a matter of time! but i think its their loss, you create a brand and service that was really liked, i think selling it out to someone else to develop would be the most beneficial!

Shame, lots of good posts on Posterous blogs.

crap.

<a href="http://sloblog.io/" rel="nofollow">http://sloblog.io/</a> - simple, responsive layout, Markdown everywhere, syntax highlighting, BrowserID/Persona-based signup, native comments + subscriptions, JSON export.<p>Coming soon: full API (someone's already building an iOS app on it), anonymous posting, authenticating against Twitter (not just Persona), Flattr integration.<p>No ads _ever_, monetization through Flattr, and I may eventually do a full open-source release. (My business is in training and consulting, not in running websites.)<p>Enjoy.