Any solid alternatives HN could recommend?
Use a static site generator and then deploy to any low-cost static host (e.g., CloudFront). Odds are that you really don't need a dynamic backend when you can just deploy new static files for each update.
Posterous will turn off on April 30
41–50 of 141 posts
Re: Posterous will turn off on April 30
#42Any solid alternatives HN could recommend?
http://everyone.me/ - utilizes dropbox
Re: Posterous will turn off on April 30
#43Can 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.
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).
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?)?
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.
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.
Re: Posterous will turn off on April 30
#44Any solid alternatives HN could recommend?
Posthaven. If you liked Posterous, I promise you will like Posthaven. I was one of the cofounders of Posterous and wrote much of the site. Brett joined us as a cofounder and we really enjoyed working on it. The difference this time is that we'll be 100% sustainable, and we are pledging to keep the site online forever. It's just me and Brett coding it right now. http://posthaven.com
I'm moving here, looks awesome and love what Garry's doing with it :-)
Re: Posterous will turn off on April 30
#45This 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.
Re: Posterous will turn off on April 30
#46Services 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.
Re: Posterous will turn off on April 30
#47Re: Posterous will turn off on April 30
#48Can 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 ima…
You can't compare Posterous to Tumblr in terms of user base. Tumblr is in top 50 websites in the world. I doubt that Posterous even cracked top 500.
Re: Posterous will turn off on April 30
#49I 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.
It seems it is the only point in many cases. As an example, consider the vast amount of superfluous twitter-helper apps that were endlessly sprouting up a couple of years ago. I don't think many of them were seriously intending on starting a legitimate business out of a web application that helps twitter users keep track of the followers that didn't follow them back.
Re: Posterous will turn off on April 30
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
We want to make sure our users can move to other sites easily. If you have suggestions for our exporter, please let me know The XML file in our export can be uploaded to Wordpress.
Sachin - are you aware of any transfer tools to Posterous's most obvious peer, Tumblr?
Tumblr is not profitable, has a very high burn rate, and has been losing employees. Speaking as a Tumblr user, I really wouldn't move to Tumblr.