Posterous: My New Social Media Addiction

The initial buzz about Posterous didn't do much to inspire me to try it. I didn't have time for the blogs and other social media tools that I was using, why would I try a mini-blogging platform whose most important feature seemed to be blog via email capability. I was trying to find ways to use email less often not more often. I figured Posterous just wasn't a tool I'd use.

Yet I found myself drawn back to Posterous, over and over again. Each time, it was the blog via email functionality that I just couldn't wrap my head around.

Leave it to Steve Rubel to say something that made me sit up and take notice (and ignore the blog via email thing that had been the sticking point for me.) Posterous is changing how I think about blogging:

Now that I have been at it for over five years, writing a weblog is starting to feel very slow and antiquated. It's like a singles tennis player who focuses solely on the baseline game, logging long balls back and forth. The statusphere, on other hand, is like playing doubles - and at the net all the time.

I'm in favor of thinking differently about blogging and that was the first nail in my anti-Posterous coffin. Steve's post made so much sense to me. Blogging is slow. Status updates are quick. Social bookmarking is too quick. There must be something else. Some way to merge all of these things together into a lifestream. Was Posterous the answer?

I dragged my feet a little more and Lynne D. Johnson hammered in the next nail with her post: Which comes first, the content or the tool?

I have to tell you. I've toyed with the idea of going straight-up flow myself at times, finding tools that do it better (whether it's being able to email or text your content in, or have direct one-to-one communication with like-minded individuals, or even have one tool to feed all of your social media spaces.) I'm almost everywhere I could possibly be, producing (or syndicating) content:...

Lynne's post says a lot of things I'd been thinking about but not actively doing anything about. Was it time for me to move, primarily, to a straight-up flow type of style? And if it was, what would that look like? What kind of tools would I use? Should Posterous be my primary platform with Twitter, Facebook, my two wordpress blogs, my BlogHer blog and groups, deli.cio.us, flickr, youtube, and blip.tv as secondary tools? I didn't know, but I grabbed a Posterous account to find out.

I still don't have the answer and a lot of that is due to not having the time to dig deep enough into Posterous to figure it out. It does feel like this is might be the right move for me. It feels like it could be the tool that I use to manage most of my other online presences. It feels like it could be the tool that allows me to record and share my lifestream. It has every single option and tool that I would need to achieve that goal.

Rather than walking you through what Posterous has that is pulling me towards it, I'd like to point you to some very well written and well documented posts. These bloggers have spent a huge amount of time outlining the technical features of Posterous and brainstorming ideas about how to use it.

Mashable has three great pieces that you really must check out:

* Posterous v Tumblr: Head to Head

* How to get the most from Posterous

* Tumblr beats Posterous

Click the Mashable reader poll, don't just assume that since it says 'Tumblr beats Posterous' that it means Tumblr really beat Posterous. Tumblr launched in 2007, Posterous launched in May 2009. The vote was very close, with a pretty significant number of readers unable to choose between the two.

Look at this idea, Using Posterous to drive traffic to a Facebook fan page. I like this kind of thinking and I feel like Posterous users are doing a lot of deep thinking about social media. I like big thinkers.

Lifehacker: Roll your own twitpic.... Here's a Posterous blog that looks like it is being used as a photo hosting tool, hardly normal. This idea feels like it could work for me.

Still not sure? 10 Ways to Use Posterous. Not all of these are ideas that will work for my lifestream but again, there's a lot of smart thinking here.

After my initial foray into the world of Posterous, I stepped back to decide whether I should use Tumblr rather than Posterous. I spent a bit of time wandering around the Tumblr community. I read Melanie's excellent Tumblr post. I fiddled with the Tumblr account that I've had forever. Then I closed down the tabs that had all of that Tumblr research open, without posting a single new Tumblr entry. And, I went back to Posterous and posted - and posted - and posted some more.

With Posterous, I feel like I'm on the verge of some personal, social media breakthrough - and on the verge of a new addiction. Scary, right?

~Denise BlogHer Community Manager
Life. Flow. Fluctuate