Posterous (YC S08) launches private, password-protected blogs by email

http://blog.posterous.com/password-protect-your-posterou

by rantfoil • 17 years ago

58 35 17 years ago

blog.posterous.com

jmtame• 17 years ago

5 points in <1 minute ;) i can tell you guys roll deep on YC hah

davi5• 17 years ago

Posterous does "roll deep" on HN, but I'm also really excited about this feature.

The general blog semantic of visible/invisible is simple but underpowered: there are a lot of things I want to show to one group of people that would just be noise to another group. This sort of feature lets me segregate my output.

thedob• 17 years ago

The way these guys pump out features, I don't see how any other blogging service can keep up. If other services try to add more engineers it will only slow down their process. Goes to show there's no better way to build a product than with a small group of awesome, dedicated coders.

marketer• 17 years ago

The most important feature in a blogging platform is the content that's already on it, and in that sense, Posterous still has a lot of catching up to do. More content drives organic growth through links and other SEO mechanisms, which in turn drives more users to sign up.

dsims• 17 years ago

And when and if you do get that huge growth, all these cool features don't always scale well. I think scaling issues is what really slows down innovation with the big guys.

jacobscott• 17 years ago

I think posterous is awesome, and it has become my primary blog, although I don't blog much. That said (and no offense intended), this feature is not exactly groundbreaking. Livejournal, Wordpress, and MoveableType all had stuff like this five years ago, right?

My understanding of how posterous works is to select and implement, cleanly, core functionality in a way that keeps the interface simple. I don't think that posterous out-competes other blog websites (or software) on features.

pclark5• 17 years ago

I'm curious is Posterous thinks tumblr is a competitor?

[PS: is it just me, or are there no theme options at all with Posterous?]

rantfoil5• 17 years ago

Theming is in our crosshairs right now.

pclark5• 17 years ago

please don't go the tumblr route of having bizarre CSS markup :)

chrysb• 17 years ago

Well done guys.

gaius• 17 years ago

How is this different from a friends-only Livejournal?

rantfoil5• 17 years ago

LJ doesn't really have any good rich media processing, especially over email. Also, LJ doesn't autopost to anywhere else.

Though for public blogs, you can autopost from Posterous to your Livejournal.

As for specific friends-only functionality, this is password protected so people without accounts can easily access it.

davi5• 17 years ago

Looks like you don't need a Posterous account to view password-protected content. Just the password. Not true on LiveJournal. (Not a user of either, yet, but this is how things look on inspection. Corrections/amplifications welcomed.)

There are lots of people in my life who I could give a link and a password to, but who I would not ask to make a LiveJournal account.

a4agarwal• 17 years ago

yeah this was a big deal for us. Most other sites do access through accounts. That stinks. I want to share my family site with my 100 family members. No way they are going to create accounts. But they do know how to type in a password.

hendler• 17 years ago

While this is a feature you can add to other blogs - I think it has a twitter-like appeal - ease of use, adaptable.

Best of luck.

brlewis• 17 years ago

I hope this gets more people interested in private group sites for families.

markbao• 17 years ago

If you're looking for family group sites, take a look at my startup: http://ramamia.com

davi5• 17 years ago

Shit. I'm now at serious risk of turning into a fanboy.

The only thing that really keeps me from diving in is that my data are owned by someone else. I see I can use it w/ my own domain, which is really cool (http://posterous.com/faq/), but is there any way to import/export data?

My content is precious to me. I don't want to give it to a web startup if I can't get it back.

BUT -- if I post by email, everything I post will be mirrored to my usual email places ...

Leaving only other people's comments on my posts, and submissions to my groups, that I won't be able to archive. (Cue sound of needle scratching across record.)

I can see this might not be a concern for a wide swathe of the potential Posterous user base... but for this prospective user, it matters.

Any plans to implement some data export/migration capabilities, rantfoil?

[edit: maybe there is an option to have other people's comments & posts to my group be forwarded to my email? Don't see it in documentation -- time to make an account & find out if the option is there.]

rantfoil5• 17 years ago

In the age of open API's, do you need to ask? =)

API's are coming, both for posting and retrieving. It's going to be one of the big tent pole features alongside theming we're excited about in the next few months.

davi5• 17 years ago

Sounds like a good trajectory.

Although there is a difference between exposing API to developers vs. giving users a feature, my "I want to own my data" worries will be greatly assuaged if a good API exists.

jfornear• 17 years ago

@Posterous: What about a feature that lets you embed your blog anywhere you want, such as on your MySpace page or on your own design?

rantfoil5• 17 years ago

I think widget embeds are a no-brainer -- we've got a few other big things ahead in the pipe, but I expect this to come later this year.

shader• 17 years ago

Posterous seems like a logical place to add support for webhooks, as an alternative to rss and email. They practically have the whole system already, but in email instead.

Any plans to add webhooks functionality?

Posterous (YC S08) launches private, password-protected blogs by email

Related Stories