In a few hours time some 59 million URLs will vanish from the web.
Thousands of hours of personal pensive endeavours will disappear as blogs and content go to the digital graveyard.
Posterous is closing on April 30. The Posterous backup tool will continue to be available until May 31 so you can download all your Spaces.
— posterous (@posterous) April 26, 2013
Posterous was acquired by Twitter last year.
I'm feeling a tad nostalgic, as personally I've not only used Posterous a great deal - it powered this blog for a long time - but it provoked a good many people to express themselves easily online without all the hassle of setting up and maintaining a blog.
At one point Posterous and Tumblr were constantly pitched against each other in the tech press, probably as reluctantly as Blur and Oasis in their day.
They were infact quite different, mechanics apart, because the audience that each platform attracted were different.
Posterous content was perhaps less visually outlandish than Tumblr which continues to part of the temporal web of memes.
Posterous however, I found was home to a great deal of fantastic content from all walks of (online) life.
I read countless blogs from founders of companies, journalists, marketers, writers, that all wrote with real thought and devotion.
It was very easy to whack out a post, it's ease of use was initially just writing an email and clicking send to have it published even under your own domain in an instant.
You just didn't need to really worry about all the ins and out of running a blog. Alas, things have changed now.
There is still real value to be had in writing on your own domain, despite the ease and attractions of participating and writing in social chambers, albeit large ones like Google Plus or niche places like ADN.
5 days until 59 million Posterous URLs disappear from the planet. My only solace is to keep coding. posthaven.com/ourpledge
— Garry Tan (@garrytan) April 26, 2013
Fortunately, there are still alternatives for easy, light blogging. This blog, despite maintaining the personal domain, is currently powered by Posthaven - a phoenix service headed by one of the original founders of Posterous.
And Posthaven allowed a brilliant method to easily import your Posterous data into it without data loss. Alas Twitter decided not to tell anyone about this in their last emails:
Not only is content likely to be lost in this darwian reality afflicting so many online services these days, but of course so will many a thoughtfully placed or earned link.@posterous How churlish & mean-spirited of you not to recommend #posthaven as a replacement for #posterous in your last email. Disappointed.
— Stephen Daniels (@sdonline) April 26, 2013
