Posterous to Tumblr

danso 13 years ago |

It's interesting to me that people who were just burned by Posterous would be OK with going to Tumblr. I like Tumblr a lot and have one myself, but it's still working out its monetization strategy:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/01/02/tumblr-...

> Money isn’t that pressing an issue–yet. Karp says Tumblr has banked “most of” the $125 million it has raised. But Tumblr spent an estimated $25 million on its operation last year and will likely have to shell out up to $40 million this year. In 2013 David Karp has a race on his hands: Can he break into the black before needing to hold his hand out again for investors?

The mobile tools for Tumblr are definitely a plus. But if you aren't blogging at a rate that requires you to have scheduling tools, then I wonder if it'd just be easier to set up a Jekyll powered blog. You lose the social-network effect of Tumblr (the reblogs and like), but from what I've seen, it's visual blogs that get reblogged/liked the most, because of how users interact (and see things) in their dashboard.

pseut 13 years ago | |

If you set up a tumblr with your own domain name, what's the problem?

benackles 13 years ago | | |

You run into the same problem you had with Posterous. Having your own domain does nothing to prevent Tumblr from running out of cash and shutting down your blog. Luckily Twitter/Posterous are doing the right thing by providing a way to retain control of your data. Imagine if they didn't provide those tools, you're at the mercy of the platform.

I'm not on Posterous, but I am on Tumblr and I do worry the company won't always be around once the cash runs dry or they get acquihired.

I like the WordPress strategy of strong data portability features within a hosted environment and an open source, self-hosted option. This way even if WordPress.com (Automattic) gets acquired, WordPress.org will always be an option without having to get comfortable with an entirely new platform. Of coarse, if you're a developer you could always just use an open source static site generator like Jekyll or Middleman.

pseut 13 years ago | | |

I use both tumblr and Jekyll, but I think it's pretty low risk that tumblr will vanish without any warning. We've known posterous would disappear for a while now. And if you point an rss reader at any blog you get a pretty decent backup trivially, so it's a hassle if tumblr disappears but not catastrophic.

But I am reluctant to use tumblr for semi-permanent content; I mostly use it for posts with a short shelf life. So maybe I agree with you subconsciously.

Edit: typos

hayksaakian 13 years ago |

What's happening to the YC blog?

binarycrusader 13 years ago | |

pg already answered that recently:

  We're moving to Posthaven.

From this conversation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5229120

hayksaakian 13 years ago | | |

Thanks I didn't see that

BuddhaSource 13 years ago | |

Somebody should tell them.

jamesbritt 13 years ago |

Deja vu http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269924

jkaljundi 13 years ago |

There's also import2: http://www.import2.com/tumblr

teoruiz 13 years ago |

It would be great if you could select in which Tumblr blog you want your Posterous' imported to.

BuddhaSource 13 years ago | |

It does have that feature after you authorise your primary blog. You can post to secondary blogs