As was the buzz in social media realms, Twitter just welcomed ‘a very talented bunch of people from Posterous’ to it. The unconventional and promising online venture, as the popular social site stated, had carved out a highly innovative product, to make sharing all across the web as well as mobile devices quite simple – a goal that the former also shared.
Twitter claims its user-friendliness will increase and its efficiency will improve with Posterous engineers, technical experts and product managers joining its core teams working on key initiatives. In its quest of getting innovative products and bringing into its fold more talented people, Twitter claims to have taken a step further with its latest acquisitions. An official Twitter post adds:
“Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We shall give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we shall share clear instructions for doing so.”
Posterous: The journey thus far and road ahead
A section of social media observers point out though, this would probably mark the beginning of an end for the blogging platform, and the brand behind it. It will be providing its users specific instructions to export their content to other services, dropping enough hints regarding this.
Since being launched in 2008, Posterous invariably aimed at finding newer ways of make social sharing more fun – sharing everything from photos and video to exciting ideas. The post-via-email feature was the one that set it apart from immediate competitors including Pownce and Tumblr. Over the last couple of years, The platform made incremental improvements, with each feature release leading to more and more simplification of blogging.
Some of the noteworthy features on it are:
1. Post tagging via e-mail
2. Autopost everywhere
3. Group blogging
4. Group blog doubled as e-mail list
How does Posterous fit in with Twitter strategy? Here’s a clue:The network focuses on making its site a destination portal even as it continues efforts to ramp up advertising revenues (expected to touch $260 million this year and close to $540 million by 2014). Twitter will eventually look to embed the Posterous experience into its own operating environment in order to expand further the microblogging platform’s experiential and functional values.
For instance, with Posterous Spaces, Twitter users can easily favorite and pin tweets. Social contents curation as a trend is fast catching up as indicated by the success of Pinterest. Spaces feature can offer group tweeting set within a private environ on Twitter. Many other interesting possibilities abound with the acquisition of Posterous. It may well become one of the strategic pieces, essential piece for Twitter in terms of the development of a universal platform for both creation and curation of contents (short form and long form).
