Comments on: Tumblr Doesn’t Leave Posterous in the Dust (or “Why Facebook is scared of Twitter”)

By: Adrian Scott

Adrian Scott — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 13:26:00 +0000

“It’s generally WAY too early to call when companies are just a few years into the (endless) race.” I dunno, a few years seem like a long time to me .

I think the bigger thing, which you allude to, is just how competitive they are, e.g. do you substitute one for the other. Tumblr is indeed more social, which makes it a bit of a different beast than Posterous. While there is a lot of overlap in some respects, there’s also a lot of ways in which they don’t overlap because of this, imho. Services that are more social can scale up more rapidly early-to-mid stage, but then get more challenging as they get larger (social spam etc)…

Thanks for the post and thoughts.

By: Jagtesh

Jagtesh — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 13:02:00 +0000

I think both services have a niche that they’re catering to with different objectives that drive them. Tumblr is more about making microblogging simple and beautiful for those who care. Posterous is all about making blogging accessible to anyone who has an email address. Very different objects, and different results.

I had to choose a blogging service for my Dad, it Posterous would be the obvious choice for its simplicity. Infact, if I want a geek blog, Posterous + Gist is more than enough. I don’t think their typical audience would even care for custom themes and CSS.

However, Tumblr appeals more to the artistic ones. They’re the ones who need customization. A personal touch. So if I want a blog for showcasing my art work or music, its Tumblr all the way.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 08:34:00 +0000

linkbait? you mean like Posterous telling users to switch from Tumblr because its a dead site?

By: David Cancel

David Cancel — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:35:00 +0000

I would like to see these metrics filtered for porn. I believe most of biggest traffic’d sites on Tumblr are porn sites.

By: Garry Tan

Garry Tan — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:33:00 +0000

There are three kinds of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics.

For what it’s worth, daily pageviews is more or less a useless statistic for evaluating Posterous because we engage users via email much more directly. All of a user’s subscribed blogs get emailed (full media and text) to users every day. If you look at monthly numbers, that’s a much better indication of engagement.

Bottom line: We’re working hard. It’s not a zero sum game. Statistics lie.

Thanks for the counterpoint and the support Tony.

By: Soup

Soup — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:06:00 +0000

Posterous doesn’t really compare to Tumblr. They lack many key features that are way to hard for them to ever catch up, one being a real social community.

By: Derp

Derp — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:57:00 +0000

No labels on graph == useless graph

By: Derp

Derp — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:57:00 +0000

No labels on graph == useless graph

By: Jeremy Meyers

Jeremy Meyers — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:28:00 +0000

I dont think they’re competing for the same market, unlike many other people. Tumblr’s value is in its community. Reblogging, ‘like-ing’, groups. Community. It’s basically like Facebook flipped inside out to focus on content nuggets rather than explicit social connections.

Posterous is more of a content aggregator (hub)/deaggregator (distributor) and no-muss-no-fuss blog platform. The community aspect isn’t there, and thats not the point of it.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:02:00 +0000

Very good point. Adjusting post!