Twitter Acquired Posterous, Bringing 36 Talented New Birds Into The Flock
“Posterous is joining the flock at Twitter” is the title of the announcement made on March 12, 2012. The blogging platform, which was Tumblr’s rival, was acquired by Twitter, a company which, as Gawker discovered, is pretty stuck with their finances.
The opportunities in front of Twitter are exciting, and we couldn’t be happier about bringing our team’s expertise to a product that reaches hundreds of millions of users around the globe. Plus, the people at Twitter are genuinely nice folks who share our vision for making sharing simpler.
This deal is more of an acqui-hire deal than the real acquisition; Twitter wants the people behind Posterous and not the product itself. You could say that this sounds like a gentle intro for shutting down Posterous, and based on Twitter’s announcement, it seems this might be the future of Posterous:
Today we are welcoming a very talented group from Posterous to Twitter. This team has built an innovative product that makes sharing across the web and mobile devices simple—a goal we share. Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better.
Posterous Spaces will stay up and running without disruption. We’ll 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’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.
Wired also noticed how in Posterous’ FAQ about this deal the company promises it will provide clear instructions for users who want to back up their content:
In a blog post, the company said it will soon provide “clear instructions” for users who want to back up their content or move from Posterous to another blogging service.
Over 36 people will switch from Posterous to Twitter, according to The Next Web. They’ll probably help build a curated news platform out of Twitter’s Discover tab.
What Twitter will be using the acquisition for isn’t clear, but if I had to guess, it might be to help it build a curated news platform out of its new #discover tab, or perhaps to assist in creating its own ‘tweet longer’ service. As Twitter moves to welcome new users with a shallower technical base, it needs to create ways to display content outside of its traditional ’140 character’ formula, without upsetting the apple cart for existing users.
Posterous is (or should we say – was) a simple blogging platform started in May 2008. It was funded by Y Combinator and you could (and still can) upload and share content on it. While other blogging platforms provided you with the registration and administration panel, Posterous was pretty simple to set up – you just had to send an email to post@posterous.com and you’d create a new Posterous blog.
Evolutionary Designs sums it up nicely:
Posterous is NOT a micro blog. You can use Posterous to post to almost every social media site out there. If a site isn’t listed, just wait, they will add it once the site takes off. But it doesn’t hurt to shoot the staff a quick email with the request to add it to their lists.
With Posterous you can send photos, audio files, links, documents and videos. You can even send both at the same time. It will figure it out and post it for you.
Are you a Posterous user? What do you think of this acquisition?
