Ask HN: Posterous 21.4M views, Tumblr 2.7B. Why?

Posted by srgseg on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @09:07AM
from the ask-hn dept.

http://www.quantcast.com/posterous.com

http://www.quantcast.com/tumblr.com

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tumblr_leaves_posterous_in_the_dust.php

From the RWW article: "Fred Wilson, whose VC firm is an investor in Tumblr, claimed in April that "Tumblr is more of a social network than Posterous." While Posterous would debate that - it too enables users to follow people, comment and re-blog - the mere fact that Tumblr has many more users than Posterous makes it a more powerful social network."

Any ideas on the fundamental reasons Tumblr is crushing it and Posterous isn't?

( 9 comments | 9 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Posterous 21.4M views, Tumblr 2.7B. Why? by scrrr on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @09:40AM (#1933781)

Failed attempt to describe it by TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/12/tumblr-1540-percent-pagevie...

I'd say design, wording, layout etc. make Tumblr much more hip than the more business-like posterous. Compare their about-pages: http://www.tumblr.com/about (cool), http://posterous.com/about (boring)

I chose Tumblr over posterous, just because it looks like more fun.

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Re:Ask HN: Posterous 21.4M views, Tumblr 2.7B. Why? by srgseg on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @09:57AM (#1933844)

Thanks, I missed that article.

I was wondering if there was something deeper to it than just great design - perhaps some kind of special viral loop that tumblr does well that posterous doesn't?

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Re:Ask HN: Posterous 21.4M views, Tumblr 2.7B. Why? by jakarta on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @03:04PM (#1935127)

I think the reason is that Tumblr is pretty hip and it's geared towards these streams of consciousness - type posts.

Most Tumblr blogs seem to consist of random photos posted, maybe a song, or a quote. It's content that is very easy to push out there but is different than Twitter.

If you compare it to Posterous, Posterous still feels too much like a regular blogging platform, so they seem to be targeting different markets.

Usually whenever a friend tells me that they want to start a blog, I suggest opting for a Tumblr account because they are going to be more likely to stick with it and post more often because of the nature of the content that works well with it.

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Re:Ask HN: Posterous 21.4M views, Tumblr 2.7B. Why? by phillijw on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @10:37AM (#1933993)

The 5 times I've attempted to connect to a posterous page, I've had a connection issue or something went wrong. There are technical problems with posterous and they need to get fixed. And it's slow.

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Re:Ask HN: Posterous 21.4M views, Tumblr 2.7B. Why? by mhd on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @09:57AM (#1933848)

Because posterous is blogger/livejournal/wordpress--, whereas tumblr is twitter++.

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Re:Ask HN: Posterous 21.4M views, Tumblr 2.7B. Why? by srgseg on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @11:08AM (#1934105)

Can you elaborate? Both have social features - so why is posterous not twitter+?

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Re:Ask HN: Posterous 21.4M views, Tumblr 2.7B. Why? by foenix on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @06:51PM (#1935873)

If I can throw something out there: a posterous post has a higher expected word-count than a tumblr post. People will categorize tumblr as twitter with better media features.

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Re:Ask HN: Posterous 21.4M views, Tumblr 2.7B. Why? by hasenj on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @04:12PM (#1935381)

The whole "blog by sending email" idea doesn't fly with me.

I tried to give posterous a shot in the past, but was disappointed. I don't exactly remember why, but it didn't strike me as something I'd want to use.

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Re:Ask HN: Posterous 21.4M views, Tumblr 2.7B. Why? by kodeshpa on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @06:58PM (#1935887)

I like posterous , i use it very extensively but some of my friends think 1 . it is a programmer blog 2. Lacks of themes 3. They can not use for professional website.

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