Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
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Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
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Re: Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
#2Don't forget to take into account the year headstart tumblr has had.
Re: Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
#3Don't forget to take into account the year headstart tumblr has had.
Exactly. Isn't Tumblr at least two years older? That graph only shows a few months of 2009.
Re: Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
#4Don't forget to take into account the year headstart tumblr has had.
I think it was only six months. And first mover advantage means little online. Facebook wasn't the first social network, Twitter wasn't the first microblogging app, etc. Posterous's had a year and a half now and it's stagnating.
Re: Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
#5I think this is actually an unfair comparison. For one thing Tumblr really works the social network aspect of the site (reblogging, hearting articles, following users) whereas posterous is more an "island" blog.
Which is fine, as they both solve different problems.
I also think Tumblr is a technically superior product as well as a superior designed product (right now): for example I can embed javascript into my Tumblr, posterous doesn't allow that. Tumblr has fantastic iPhone and mobile applications, and generally feels, well, more mature.
You mention Posterous have top tier investors and developers, Tumblr does too. Tumblr has spark capital and union square ventures as their investors. Marco Arment, the technical lead at Tumblr is a perfect balance of technical chops, getting stuff done and doing it right.
Re: Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
#6Personally I don't really care for the Company A versus Company B frame, or the Region A versus Region B frame. However, I was quite interested in the discussion of how a feature which sounds great to an engineer can have negative consequences for your conversion rates versus something which is quicker to implement/less sophisticated/flies-in-face-of-received-wisdom/whatever.
Other examples: "breaking navigation" during conversion funnels, long copy, 10 Ways To Write A Title Cosmo Editors Don't Want You To Know About, etc etc.
Re: Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
#7Don't forget to take into account the year headstart tumblr has had.
I think it was only six months. And first mover advantage means little online. Facebook wasn't the first social network, Twitter wasn't the first microblogging app, etc. Posterous's had a year and a half now and it's stagnating.
You're wrong about six months -- Tumblr has been around since early 2007 -- we launched about 16 months later, and grew at a far faster rate last year than Tumblr (10x across every metric actually.)
Re: Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
#8Personally I don't really care for the Company A versus Company B frame, or the Region A versus Region B frame. However, I was quite interested in the discussion of how a feature which sounds great to an engineer can have negative consequences for your conversion rates versus something which is quicker to implement/less sophisticated/flies-in-face-of-received-wisdom/whatever. Other examples: "breaking navigation" dur…
He's not really doing analysis though- he's more trolling the west coast and posturing.
Re: Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
#9Personally I don't really care for the Company A versus Company B frame, or the Region A versus Region B frame. However, I was quite interested in the discussion of how a feature which sounds great to an engineer can have negative consequences for your conversion rates versus something which is quicker to implement/less sophisticated/flies-in-face-of-received-wisdom/whatever. Other examples: "breaking navigation" dur…
He's not really doing analysis though- he's more trolling the west coast and posturing.
That was my impression at first glance, but look at his description of the steps involved in signing up with a three element form versus signing up via email, and ignore the sarcasm for a second. His conclusion is correct and would not have occurred to me absent reading the article.
Re: Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous's ass
#10There seems to be a contradiction in his argument. He talks a lot about the signup pages, focusing on what he guesses is Tumblr's much higher conversion rate and the reasons for why that conversion rate is high. Shortly thereafter, he lays into Posterous for being too metrics-driven. How could a company that's too metrics-driven let themselves get crushed (again, according to the author's guess) on something as important as signup page conversions?
The whole piece has this arbitrary anti-Silicon Valley animus that I don't really get and which doesn't seem to serve any purpose.
It's useful to talk about conversion rates, the importance of good UI/UX, and what Tumblr and Posterous do or don't do well, but the broader, hand-waving indictment of Silicon Valley doesn't add anything.
(Also, the author doesn't directly do this, but articles like this can falsely suggest that the two companies at hand are playing a zero-sum game.)