Anyone following my Twitter stream will have noticed that about a month ago I was quite enthusiastic about the blog platform, Posterous.

Actually, I got so impressed with the service that I was seriously considering changing my blog from my Wordpress platform to the Posterous platform. (In the end I ended up changing to Squarespace instead, and am very happy about that, but that's another story).

A few days ago I met up with Vitus. He and a few friends, Steffen and Mille, recently opened a nice little restaurant - emporiUM Escandinavia- making delicious Danish/Scandinavian food, right here in the middle of São Paulo, Brazil (become a fan of emporiUM Escandinavia on Facebook).

Except talking about their food, which is just truly amazing, (Ever tried the Scandinavian food? Go try it out - Order online here) we talked about different ways of using social media to market start-ups.

We talked about the fragmentation of Twitter and of the pros and cons of Facebook fan pages versus Facebook group pages.

Now, what Vitus was looking for, was an ultra-simple-to-use platform, where him and his crew could easily broadcast rich media information about their restaurant and their food.

...and this is where it all ties together, and where Posterous comes back into the story...

 

So what is Posterous?

Basically, Posterous is a blog-broadcasting tool or blog hub, which is controled from the comfort of your email inbox. You could go to Posterous.com to sign up, but just to prove how simple Posterous is, they decided to cut out any tedious sign-up. Instead, simply email: post@posterous.com

Soon after you will receive an email from posterous with a link to your new blog post, and all your blog details, which you can now edit as you wish. 
 

 

 

 

 

Can Posterous replace your "traditional" blog?

Some use Posterous as a traditional blog, but in my opinion, the real power of the service is not to be a blog as we know them, but to be a blog hub.

What I mean is, Posterous is not about pulling people back to your site as a normal blog might be - Posterous is about pushing your content out there where your readers are.

"Posterous is following a social media trend we've seen evolve over the last couple of years, basically asking: "Why pull people from around the web back into your blog, when you can hand them your content right where they are?"".

Social media seems to have come to a cross road where we on the one side find the old school bloggers of the likes of Seth Godin. Seth's blog is his social media centre, and his presence on Twitter and Friendfeed is merely to push out blog posts and pull readers back to the blog.

According to Seth, he does not want to use tools, if he cannot use them really well - nothing is worth doing if its done half-way. I would guess the reasoning is the same for why Seth does not enable comments on his blog, though from my perspective this seems to be supporting a monologue instead of a dialog. Then again, the beauty of social media is that everyone can use it exactly as they wish.

On the other side we have bloggers who tend to spend more and most of their time over on Twitter and/or Friendfeed, and who might even be wondering if their old blog is still relevant in today's social media world. Robert Scoble and his "Web 2010" has been a recent sign of this trend, and to a more extreme part so has Steve Rubel, by completely giving up his "traditional" blog and moving to Posterous.

 

Posterous Special Features

Posterous - The Blog Hub

The number one feature on the Posterous cool features list is the blog hub broadcasting tool. In effect, according to what email address you send your Posterous blog post to, you can decide to where Posterous forwards it. This might sound complicated, but it is really simple. An example will illustrate my point. Lets say you want to create a new blog post, and only want it on your blog (like in the old days). What you would do is, go to your email inbox, write your blog post, and send it to blog@yourdomain.posterous.com. If you want to send a Tweet, but not have it appear on your Facebook, you email it to twitter@yourdomain.posterous.com. Now, if you want to broadcast your new blog post to Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Friendfeed, Facebook etc. you simply email post@yourdomain.posterous.com  - Easy!

 

Email-to-blog feature

As mentioned, Posterous is easily controlled from within your email inbox.
There is a "write new post" function on your Posterous dahsboard, but there is no advantage of using it.
If you can insert rich media in your emails (as for example inline pictures, font and colors) then you have more styling options from your email inbox than you do from the Posterous dashboard.

Posterous bookmarklet

Posterous features a very useful bookmarklet. When you find things from around the web which you want to import into your blog, (such as videos or quotes) you simply highlight what you want to import, and press the bookmarklet. It's as easy as it can be!

Overall ease of use

Someone once said that a tool which is fun to use gets used more.
Posterous is one of these tools. It simply lets you do all the essential stuff and leaves out the rest. It could not be easier to create a new post, or to add tags to your posts.

And that is really all you need. Sure, it would be nice to have the option to set up several pages and categories, and to use blog widgets etc. But most bloggers don't really need all that. A lot of users like Posterous for its simplicity, and if you can live without the advanced features, then you will love Posterous.

 

Groups

The group feature on Posterous lets your blog have several authors (Posterous currently let you have 3 blog groups per account). Creating groups is also a way to enable group members/readers to receive updates from your blog by email.

By enabling "post by moderation" everyone can email updates to your blog, which in effect allow big groups and open forums on your blog.

An example of the open forum was the recent election in Iran, which created quite a bit of attention in the international press. As the BBC and CNN were not too fast to cover the story, Iranian bloggers turned to social media to spread their protests to the world.

Several Twitter support groups (#tag groups) were created to support the Iranian people, with hundreds of updates per minute - faster than even the Iranian intelligence force could close down the IP address.

Furthermore, Iranian blogger, Faramarz Hashemi, created an open support forum on Posterous, collecting all types of social media - blog posts, poems, open letters, videos and pictures, sent via email - from all over Iran which ended up on this open forum supporting the Iran Election (Warning: The Iran Election blog is in its essence not censured, and features some very strong footage and filming).

Google Analytics

Many bloggers like to have a look at the statistics of their blog. If to see the numbers of readers/vistors to their blog, or to see which are the most visited posts, to focus future sentiment doesn't matter.
One of the greater analytics tools is Google Analytics, which is supported by Posterous.

 

Custom Url's & Imported blogs

Posterous makes it easy to import your existing blog into Posterous, and gives you the option of using your custom domain URL (so you avoid having to use the ".posterous" URL on your blog).

 

What I would like to see from Posterous

From my Posterous wish list, I would like to see the possibility to add pages. Categories I can do without, but pages would be nice. Then again, this is just me, and most people will do just fine using tags alone, instead of categories and pages.

Themes or customization is another function I would like to see soon, but I've heard that themes will indeed be roled out in the near future, so I guess it is just to have a little bit of patience.

 

All in all, I think Posterous is an very interesting and innovative new blog platform, which continues to add new amazing tools to its arsenal of features, at a mind blowing speed.

Go check out Posterous, and subscribe to the official Posterous blog.
You can also follow the official Posterous on Twitter, as well as its founders, Garry Tan and Sachin Agarwal.

And you...

What's your take on Posterous? Where do you think the future of social media blogging is heading?