“Microblogging wars?” Really?
From the usually well-balanced
underpaidgenius:
Microblogging Wars Escalate: Posterous Claims Tumblr Blocks Its Autopost Feature
soupsoup:
I think this is a smart move by Tumblr.
Not as a strategic way to make Posterous less useful, but because I don’t want content auto-posted from one social network to another anywhere, be it Posterous, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Auto-posting, link dumping, are the worst things to ever happen to social media besides social media “experts”
Since Stowe hasn’t added any commentary here, I assume he agrees with the soupsoup post. This doesn’t make him unbalanced, but usually he throws a little something in to let UnderpaidGenius readers know what he thinks. Since he didn’t assume is all we can do. In that case, then I disagree with both of them. The worse thing to happen to social media is the idea that people can decide what’s right for everyone—even *saying* that a particular use of a particular site or function should not be allowed is a downright douchey thing to do. Who are you to decide what things are used for? Who cares? Don’t like how someone uses something? Don’t follow them or don’t use the site. One site being deliberately jerky to another, regardless of the reason, has one effect that matters—the users being inconvenienced.
But no, no, it’s much more important that these “Microblogging wars” continue, for they are just wars! WAIT—no they’re not. Posterous and Tumblr are both pretty good at being douchey.
In fact, from my first experience with Tumblr I felt that Tumblr cornered the market on uber-controlling, doucheyness in that it has a few odd limitations that almost
turned me off the site, entirely. For starters, Tumblr tells you exactly how to post what you post. Want to post a picture? No title allowed. The same goes for video and audio posts, too—Sure, you can add a title to a text post, but it is “optional,” which always feels like discouragement, to me. When I email a picture directly to Tumblr, it only accepts the email’s subject as the caption (rather than the title, unlike Posterous, which logically does this) and Tumblr ignores any *actual* caption you include in the body of the email (also, *unlike* Posterous).
Then, when you do post a pic, depending on how you do it, it may show up in full-size *only* on your blog and as a thumbnail to any Tumblr users who follow you or possibly, to them, not at all. See, if you only visit a Tumblr-user’s main page, you see everything they want you to see—which is fine. But if you take advantage of Tumblr’s largely AWESOME Twitter-style dashboard (which displays your stream of Tumblr blogs you’re following), all bets are off. Tumblr will either display a seriously tiny thumbnail of your image or not at all, putting a tiny rectangle icon in its place. I don’t care why Tumblr does this—it is intensely frustrating.
Tumblr does a few things really well, however. The previously-mentioned Twitter-style dashboard is completely addictive. I *love* it and it’s really why I continue to use Tumblr. It’s the single easiest way to keep up with blogs you care about. I wish every other blog service would rip it off because every time I come across a blog I love that isn’t on Tumblr I get frustrated because nobody makes it easier to follow you than Tumblr. In fact, I just walk away from blogs on other services for that reason :(
Tumblr also makes it SUPER easy to run multiple blogs. I run over a dozen of them. Their theme system is straightforward and incredibly simple to use or customize. Their tags work incredibly well (even as categories) and you can provide RSS feeds for each tag if you want to. I love that Tumblr will allow you to import feeds. However, like regular posting, there are rigid guidelines the imports must fit into—which I don’t like.
One other thing I like about Tumblr is that they let you include Google Adsense in your theme. Letting you make a few pennies off of your own content—imagine that! This was my main motivation for moving all of my online blogging to Tumblr and to put up with their other limitations, in the process. It’s been worth it, but I wish they’d improve—loosen up their absurd posting rules—I was using Posterous to crosspost to Tumblr just because it was more flexible than directly posting to Tumblr—but since Tumblr doesn’t allow for crossposted images to display to Tumbr-users in their streams, I’ve stopped doing this. So if Tumblr could allow for images to be displayed, that’d be great, too.
See, I love Posterous for it’s flexibility of posting but hate it for everything else. It’s themes are hard to use, it’s interface is cumbersome and clunky, and their recent “
Tumblr is for high school kids” post made them look like a bunch of dickweeds and inspired me to
block anyone from seeing my content on their site. In fact, it looks like they’ve just been targeting every blog site known to man and talking about how Posterous is better—it’s like they’re really desperate or something.
But of all the blogging services I’ve tried out, Posterous does have the most potential. It is truly mobile and is as easy to post to as sending an email. Of course, anything beyond that and it’s a horrible pain in the ass.
Imagine combining the best of both worlds from Tumblr and from Posterous! It would be the perfect blog host!! Uber-flexible posting and incredible back-end and following ability! It would be heaven!
