Tumblr Meets its Match in Posterous

We received a lot of positive (and negative) feedback on our post “Twitter is Done. Tumblr is Next.” Well, looks like I might have found what’s next, next. Posterous received some high praise when it launched last year, and big social media types are starting to take notice, including Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki. So what’s it all about?

Easiest … blog site … ever?

Tippingpoint Labs on Posterous

In functionality, Posterous looks remarkably like Tumblr. Your page is updated in traditional reverse chronological order. It can include simple text posts, images, and video. It can incorporate content from and post to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, all the usual suspects.

But to use Posterous, you don’t even need an account. Posting is as simple as writing an email. Your subject is the title. The body is the text. Send it off to post@posterous.com and you have your very own posterous. Subscribe to others’ posterouses (posterii?) and get email updates when they post.

Two marketing birds with one stone

For small companies, Posterous is a very efficient way to reach an audience and boost relevance. It requires almost zero tech savvy, and its use of email technology — notably the email updates to subscribers — makes it easy for your content to reach users in their inbox in addition to being published to the web, where it’s searchable.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, readers engage and absorb more when they’re in an online environment they create and control. In your home, you always know which light switch to flip or which cabinet to open. Readers are more likely to give you additional mindshare when reading your content from their comfortable inbox than on someone else’s site; the navigation is much more familiar.

Winning the middle ground

I shouldn’t have been surprised when I read that Redbox DVD kiosks are the biggest threat to Netflix in the home video market, but I was. With Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu making moves to provide more original, high-quality content, I assumed that the next competition to Netflix would be digital rather than on disc. As I thought about it, I began to see parallels between Redbox in the video market and Posterous in the blogosphere.

Traditional bloggers, or companies that have invested heavily in a corporate blog, may be intimidated by Twitter’s swirling mass of content. It can be tough for traditional marketers to give up central content control, to compose within the 140-character limitation, and to discern the ROI.

For folks entrenched in a Blockbuster mentality, the Netflix mail-in video store might be too big an abstract leap. The Redbox kiosks are an attractive middle ground.

Posterous fills in the gap between traditional blogs and Twitter. It lets content creators provide long-form content, which won’t work on Twitter, with incredible ease — if you can send an email, you can post. You can even import an old blog site into Posterous.

Posterous in the Adoption Phase

Posterous Enters the Adoption Phase

In its New Media Life Cycle, Posterous is in the early Adoption Phase. Early adopters are taking notice and attempting to drive the overall quality of the content. I haven’t seen any big name brands heavily promoting their Posterous yet. But the more that tech gurus like Brogan and Kawasaki embrace the site, the faster the quantity and quality of the site will increase and improve.

I wonder though if, by making it so easy to post, Posterous has opened itself up to a flood of meaningless, valueless content. With no signup, no email verification, no CAPTCHA, anyone can publish content through an email. Will the channel get spammed out of existence?

I don’t know what checks they have in place at this time, but one of the first rules of the internet is, “If you build it, they will troll it.”

The takeaway

All-encompassing blog hubs like Posterous are growing quickly, attracting their audiences with dead simple interfaces, and that’s good for them. Breaking down the barriers to content creation ensures varied audiences and types of content.

Bridging a gap between social media will work well for Posterous for awhile, but to go beyond adoption and gestation, they’ll need to carve out a stronger personal identity. Because once the bridge has been crossed, you’re on to something else entirely.

My question to you

I postulate that Posterous is so easy to use that the channel is too open to low-quality content and spam.

Can easy ever be too easy?

About the author

Andrew Davis -

In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.

Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.

When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.

He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.

"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."