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Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

posthaven.com

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Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#31

Post by jbail »

How can anyone believe this will hold true? Especially coming from the founders of Posterous who sold out and then shuttered their service?

Was Posterous created to not be sustainable? If so, then Posterous's users were duped from the get go into using something that the founders knew wasn't sustainable and would eventually disappear. That's not a good way to treat users and it surely doesn't inspire confidence in the founders' next projects.

Honestly, I find pitching this service on the day of the news that Posterous is shutting down to be kind of tacky. I'm not trolling or trying to be negative...I'm just suspicious of why anyone should trust this.

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#32

Post by jmathai »

jbail wrote: post #31

How can anyone believe this will hold true? Especially coming from the founders of Posterous who sold out and then shuttered their service? Was Posterous created to not be sustainable? If so, then Posterous's users were duped from the get go into using something that the founders knew wasn't sustainable and would eventually disappear. That's not a good way to treat users and it surely doesn't inspire confidence in th…

The only exchange I've had with one of the founders (Garry) was on Twitter when a YC company named SnapJoy launched a campaign to "free your photos" from Flickr.

The only problem was that SnapJoy was a bigger black hole than Flickr was. An API to access your photos was coming soon for months and never came before they were acquired by Dropbox.

Somehow he was arguing around that point. Unsure how but it couldn't possibly have made sense.

I have nothing against Garry or anyone else involved in these projects/companies but it goes a long way to hurt those of us [1] trying to build software where users actually control and retain ownership of their data.

[1] I founded The OpenPhoto Project in 2011

https://github.com/photo

http://theopenphotoproject.org

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#33

Post by fotbr »

garry wrote: post #5
iSnow wrote: post #2

Great - until that one gets acquired or acqui-hired by Facebook|MS|Google... I wish there were some open source resource sharing protocol a bit more high-level than HTTP.

Like Brad said -- this one is not to be sold. We'll charge money and keep the lights on no matter what. We want to provide this service like a basic utility like water and power, because that's what having a voice on the Internet should be.

Why should I trust that this will last longer, given the same people are involved? The fact that you charge $5 / month? What do I get for $5 / month versus, say, my own VPS running whatever blog software I choose for the same money (or less)?

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#35

Post by jerrya »

largesse wrote: post #34

This begs the question: if the acquisition was talent acquisition why couldn't they have just sold the Posterous name and software?

Back a month or so when Quora announced blogs, I said a better move would have been for Quora to pickup the Posterous service.

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#36

Post by lkrubner »

bradgessler wrote: post #4
iSnow wrote: post #2

Great - until that one gets acquired or acqui-hired by Facebook|MS|Google... I wish there were some open source resource sharing protocol a bit more high-level than HTTP.

There is a pledge: Our pledge to you... We'll never be acquired. We'll always keep your URL's online. We'll always keep it the best place to post. And they charge $5 per month, so the sustainability is more clear. I've talked to Garry and Brett about Post Haven and they are genuinely committed to making this work as they pledge on the website.

About this:

>And they charge $5 per month, so >the sustainability is more clear.

In 1996, Geocities began offering a deal: pay $4.95 a month and no ads will be shown on your site, and you get to use your own domain for your website. I signed up immediately. 3 year later, Geocities was acquired by Yahoo. 10 years later, Geocities was closed:

http://geocities.yahoo.com/index.php

There is nothing really permanent about any of these services. Ma Bell may have offered a reliable phone service for almost 100 years, but in the era of the Internet the half-life of consumer sites tends to be much shorter.

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#37

Post by groby_b »

garry wrote: post #5
iSnow wrote: post #2

Great - until that one gets acquired or acqui-hired by Facebook|MS|Google... I wish there were some open source resource sharing protocol a bit more high-level than HTTP.

Like Brad said -- this one is not to be sold. We'll charge money and keep the lights on no matter what. We want to provide this service like a basic utility like water and power, because that's what having a voice on the Internet should be.

I'll believe that once you actually have an escrow policy that e.g. ensures both source and domain names go into the trust of if you sell or fold.

Until then, that pledge is just words which can be rescinded any given time.

To be very clear: I am not insinuating you would break your pledge, but as a user, I'd be unwise to trust a non-binding statement on a web page.

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#38

Post by danielsiders »

iSnow wrote: post #2

Great - until that one gets acquired or acqui-hired by Facebook|MS|Google... I wish there were some open source resource sharing protocol a bit more high-level than HTTP.

This is what we're building with Tent (https://tent.io). The idea is since you can always host your own Tent server, it doesn't matter if your hosting provider shuts down.

You can migrate your data to another server and change your entity (global user identifier) as part of the protocol, so there's no messy "please update your address books" (that part happens automatically.

Data is stored as posts and post types are developer extensible (posts are JSON and binary attachments), so if your favorite app is discontinued, another developer can make a great app that interacts with the same post types.

We're working on a Tent app that imports Posterous posts right now.

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#39

Post by chc »

webwanderings wrote: post #28
wiwillia wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, Tumblr, etc. all have investors and shareholders which are trying to turn a profit. I think the idea here (and Garry can correct me if I'm wrong) is that they'll never take on outside funding or entertain selling the company, the sole purpose of the site will be to build something that is sustainable and lasting as opposed focusing on profit.

That's exactly why $5 doesn't seem like a transparent deal right now. It is also not clear who is the target audience here. The average person who would sign-up for a blog, wouldn't shell out $5 so easily, and a professional blogger would look at it suspiciously to begin with (given the extremely early stage). It would be better if that reference to $5 is clarified in-depth, or taken out altogether with a different k…

> The average person who would sign-up for a blog, wouldn't shell out $5 so easily

[citation needed]

People are very often more willing to shell out money than we assume. Not all people, but some. See Pinboard.

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#40

Post by bfe »

bfe wrote: post #16
garry wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please visit https://posthaven.com for now. Brett and I are working on fixing the servers asap.

Thanks. Getting an SSL connection error there, and it's actually sunny in Portland right now so I need to get outside for a run, I'll check back after.

Awesome, just got back, found it working, and signed up. Thanks again garry.
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