Guest Post by Tom McFarlin.
We’ve mentioned Posterous a few times here on ChurchCrunch. For those of you that are, ahem, missing out, Posterous makes it dead simple to share anything and everything you want with all of your social networking services by email.
Even if you don’t use Posterous, you’ve likely seen some of your friends sharing links that begin with http://post.ly. Initially, this was the domain that Posterous used to link your content with other networks so that the URL’s weren’t long and ugly; however, on Tuesday, Posterous unveiled a new service and went public with their post.ly domain:
Posterous differentiates itself from most of the other online blogging platforms by allowing you to simply share all your goodness via email and by dispersing it out to your social services.
Post.ly doesn’t seek to change that. It doesn’t even attempt to add to the formula. It simply provides another way of doing the same thing, it just looks different doing it. Rather than using your email client, you can now use your web browser.
Yet, I’ve got mixed feelings about this…
On one hand, we’re still able to do the same things we’ve always been able to do within our email clients, we just have an alternative interface for accomplishing it. The thing is, one of the major differentiating factors of Posterous is the fact that your email client is the interface.
At this point, it looks like the biggest feature for Posterous is the ability to post to all the major social networks. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still cool with that. But I’m curious: Since many of us here in the community use Posterous, what do you think about this whole post.ly thing? Does having a new interface add any value to the service?
@gregdavispsu says
I love posterous and the way it has made sharing easy for the masses. There always was a web-interface in addition to email to make updates, but it was very hard to find inside of your posterous site. However, on that interface there was no option to attach or upload files. The new post.ly interface now is not only dead simple to use, it also gives that missing functionality for attachments.
Yes email interface is cool, but many will prefer the cool simple new interface as well – especially those that haven't tried it before – which is the point isn't it?
Tom says
True on the web interface. It was so buried within the admin area that it seemed to be less than usable.
I personally am a big fan of the email interface just because, say I stumble across something or have a thought to offer on some music I'm listening to, it's easy to shoot off a quick email and update Twitter (and occasionally Facebook) without having to launch a new browser tab, login, and construct the post.
I think the point is definitely to target a wider range of people. And don't get me wrong, I dig Posterous – I'm all for it.
Tom says
You're right. The post-via-web face has been around, but it's definitely been clunky to use. One of the main things that attracted me to Posterous was the fact that my email client was the interface to the service.
And don't get me wrong, I'm all for Posterous and assimilating it to the masses. I personally have no problem with the web interface – I'm more interested in hearing what others feel about it (hence the article) 😉
Tom says
Alright, so it took a long time for my first comment to show up, hence the double post. Ah, well.
Andrew says
I intend to use the post.ly web interface for uploading audio files to the podcast I admin. I used to be restricted by how large a file Gmail would let me send, but now I can upload an audio file at any quality I wish.
But it's tough to say whether it really adds much value to the typical end-user. Posterous is probably just trying to appeal to a wider audience, those who weren't keen on the email-to-post mechanism.
Tom says
What kind of podcast do you run?
I'm usually all for the web interface, but the size limit can definitely be a hindrance when dealing with large media. I don't publish that much stuff to my Posterous account so that's not really a problem I deal with.
Anyway, I do agree – they're just adding appeal to a wider audience – I'm just interested in seeing what the rest of all you Posterous-publishin'-people think.
Andrew says
The podcast is for a collegiate ministry. We record and upload the teaching from our weekly meeting. http://podcast.fsunavigators.org/
[shameless plug] I actually wrote about it in a guest post on this site. https://churchm.ag/podcasting-via-posterous/ [/shameless plug]
Tom says
Sweet, I checked out the article. I dig seeing how people leverage technology like this as a means to their end.
Good stuff.
Vin Thomas says
I am impressed with the power of Posterous. Although, Tumblr is a competitor worth noting. I just wish WordPress would incorporate some of these features into their application.
@gregdavispsu says
Worth noting is the ability to have Posterous not only update Twitter and Facebook, you can also have it autopost to your WordPress blog. There is a setting you have to enable on the WP side but it works very well!
Tom says
I remember when Tumblr first hit the scene. It was pretty slick.
Thing about Posterous and Tumblr, to me, is their approach. Tumblr seeks to bring everything into it where as Posterous seeks to push everything out from it.
Rob Lombardi says
I've been using bit.ly and like the addition of the statistics reporting. Their bookmarklet is very straightforward and can post to Facebook and Twitter. If I combined the two, I would get a bit.ly link from the bookmarklet, copy it into an email and send to [email protected]. I'll have to try that out.
@gregdavispsu says
You can get you Posterous bookmarklet here: http://posterous.com/help/bookmarklet It works great!
Tom says
Big fan of bit.ly. It's definitely helped me get a clearer picture of what works best when trying to drive traffic to a site from various networks.
When I care about statistics, I use it. When I care about sharing random things I stumble across on the web but don't care much about things beyond the number of visits, I roll with Posterous.
Trent says
I’m real interested in finding out what the size limits are. Up until now, I have had problems sending in some videos to posterous because those videos that I recorded wound up bigger than my email server would allow as an attachment. Now, I’ll be trying post.ly whenever gmail won’t allow my attachments due to size. However, without any info about the upload limitations, I may be stuck anyway.
Lets hope they allow at least 35 MB or more. That would be awesome.