Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven • Hacker News Board

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#141

Post by rickcolosimo » Mon, Feb 18, 2013, 4:36 PM UTC

rubyrescue wrote: post #64

garry wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started working on Posterous in 2008, I intended to work on it forever. It didn't work out that way, and I left in January of 2011. It was a venture-funded company by then and we were committed to super-growth, not sustainability. We never started charging for the product. Posthaven is the result of my experience with that. I know the world needs a simple, clean, well-lit, easy place to post. One that doesn't…

since you're posting here, you have a grocer's apostrophe on the home page... it's "URLs", not "URL's". second, can we auto-migrate somehow from a posterous backup - my wife runs a blog on posterous and is really worried that she needs to migrate. if i could tell her that she just now needs to pay $5/month and not rely on me to hack something together w/octopress and github she will be so excited.

OT: "grocer's apostrophe" -- never heard someone use that phrase, and I really like it. I see that all the time, and it makes my skin itch. I will be borrowing it frequently.

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#142

Post by rickcolosimo » Mon, Feb 18, 2013, 4:41 PM UTC

ingve wrote: post #113

8ig8 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about making this a non-profit, run by a board? Different idea, but, for example Matt M. created the WordPress Foundation to independently carry out the things he believed in. http://wordpressfoundation.org/

Apparently, that "independent" WordPress Foundation is still just Matt: "From an ultimate decision-making point of view, the Foundation is mainly just me. [...] It’s worth noting that the Foundation was created purely to be a trademark and IP holding entity that Automattic could transfer its ownership of the WordPress trademark to. There are no “members.”" [0] [0] http://wpkrauts.com/2013/leaders-and-the-greater-good…

Without digging into the specifics of the matter,if the Foundation is indeed a 501(c)(3), the IRS should/will almost certainly have required it to have three independent board members.

In addition, having counseled clients on this structure, the benefit of creating a nonprofit and giving it IP is that it creates a public check on anything to do with that IP. For example, while a startup's founders can sell the company, they can't unilaterally agree to sell off the IP in the nonprofit, and the public can challenge any such sales by recourse to a state attorney general's office.

It's not perfect, but it helps protect the IP in the way founders want to. In many ways, it's a one-way decision, which is why it works.

(Yes, IAAL.)

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#143

Post by Blogette » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

1. When Garry says "forever," I think he means in comparison to the now-dead posterous; & not necessarily "forever" as in "All of God's Eternity"!

2. At least you picked a decent name, PostHaven. I always hated the name Posterous. And the brown/yellow logo. Ugh!

3. As a non-techie I would pay $60/year for 10-blogs, BUT NOT if it will be as bad as Posterous which worked like pure crap for email-posting (yet that was their big Come On!) From Summer 2009 for 6 months it worked fine, then something changed & it never worked well after that (only headlines would post with empty body content!!!) Wasted TONS of time & energy trying to get answers from them & only got the run-around. It was a miserable nightmare for 20-months when I finally bailed in Spring 2011 & went to WP.com, & that was after seeing a post at Computerworld that there was a bug between Gmail & Posterous!!! Yet Posterous didn't know that? Pfff! Wp.com works excellent for email-posting & w/Gmail/iPhone. Make it like WP.com & maybe will consider...

4. Do not make the account-email address the ONLY addy that can be email-posted FROM. Give us a "special post to" addy like WP does so we can post by email from ANY of our email addys, & not just the ONE connected to account. That was another royal PITA thing about Posterous. We should not have to add ALL of our addys as add'l "users" just to be able to post-by-email from DIFFERENT addys. I cannot even express how arse-backward-miserable that set-up was!! If PostHaven sets it up that same way, no thanks!

5. Do not have Tags in the Subject Line like Posterous did!! Did it ever occur to those guys we might send our post to Posterous & elsewhere at the same time? (such as Email Groups?) Then the other list shows the stupid Tags in the Subject Line! Bad idea!

6. Don't make the Default "Gallery" so that we have to type "NO GALLERY" in every stinking email! Or at least let US, the user, SET the DEFAULT CHOICE.

7. Let us choose AT LEAST 1-global FONT for the blog body & headlines, VERDANA, crystal clear, best READABLE font.

8. Let us choose AT LEAST 2-global Font SIZES for the blog body text & headline. NO TEENY TINY STINKING FONT SIZES!

9. Let us choose AT LEAST 3-global Font COLORS: links, headlines, body text (#000000 BLACK body TEXT >> & NO STINKING "INVISIBLE GREY" FONT ANYWHERE!!)

WP.com wants $30/YEAR for the "privilege" to change global font, font size, font colors. If it was a one-time-$30-fee, fine, but not every year (10 blogs would be $300 PER YEAR just to have a decent font!)

10. Let us choose ALL Theme COLORS, background, menu bars, Blog's Title, etc.

11. Themes: WP.com & Posterous both have & had CRAPPY UGLY themes. You can tell that it is mostly GUYS designing all the hideous themes, because women would know better! (design, colors, layout, FUNCTION), but unfortunately, we are not the tech geeks! If PostHaven themes will be as crappy, it won't be worth switching, unless total flexibility is INCLUDED (see #8-9-10 above).

--Have several "Magazine" type themes, Photoblogging themes, Portfolio themes, etc., that actually WORK with EMAIL-blogging! (Most of them DON'T, including the one Posterous had! The first photo should show up on site but they never did! -- The only WP.com "magazine" theme that works w/email-posting is Triton Lite & it has a hideous white film over it & TEEEENY TINY INVISIBLE GREY FRONT, making it a total loser of a theme).

--Or, let us dl free or paid themes from 3rd parties elsewhere to use on our blogs & you guys could forego the whole themes disasters. (WP.com has paid themes but quite pricey $75-$150, & I think you STILL have to buy the CSS Upgrade just to change fonts/sizes/colors!)

12. Let us decide WHERE we want the DAY, DATE, & TIME of each post! (At the TOP, under the Headline, NOT out to the side wasting space, NOR at the bottom of the posts! Ugh!)

13. WIDGETS! & SHORTCODES! (for archives, search, RSS Feeds, Twitter Stream, HTML-Text-&-Images boxes, videos, etc.) Frankly, I don't see why the wheel needs to be RE-invented... it must be a "guy thing." Just copy what WP.com has already invented, but add the flexibility that WP.com does not include & I would gladly give you $60/year for 10-blogs.

14. Oh, & allow users to have ADS!!! Posterous was always promising they were going to allow users to have ads, but they never did (all the while they were Vigi-linking everyone's blogs!)

15. And if being able to use our own domains is INCLUDED, that would be GREAT. WP.com wants $18/Year for that privilege (10 blogs = $180) plus annual domain fees.

16. Will PostHaven be hosting .PDFs, .MP3s, Videos, etc. like Posterous did? That was ONE good thing!

17. BUT I'm not willing to sign up in advance because there's no way to know if any of the other above miseries from prior Posterous & current WP.com will be the same at PostHaven or not. But will keep an eye out to see how it develops.

Re: Posterous cofounders create a replacement: Posthaven

#144

Post by gwern » Fri, Mar 01, 2013, 2:58 AM UTC

OGC wrote: post #123

qeorge wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the founders of Posterous who sold out and then shuttered their service Seriously? Just gonna throw 'em under the bus like that? Friends like these.. Its time to stop trotting out this meme that the alternative to an "aquihire" was a sustainable business. Sometimes you've got to fish or cut bait. Ad hominem aside, trust should never be required for a good agreement. PostHaven has made a great start by killing any acq…

What the hell are Wikimedia, the EFF or archive.org going to do with a blog hoster? Idk, but people really need to stop hyping this. It's just some company hosting _blogs_ get over yourself.

WMF or EFF, I dunno, but the Internet Archive has plenty of interest in large sets of blogs (much as the Library of Congress has interest in tweets).

The nifty thing, though, is that PostHaven doesn't have to wait if they are genuine in their intent! The Internet Archive offers a paid archiving service, Archive-It...