Wordpress Bites the Email Bug – Posterous Effect?
If I tell my friends who blog that I know a blogging platform that let’s you post by email, and even embed videos and pictures in it by simply attaching the files in the email, or linking the URL of the YouTube vid, they would nod their head and say we know it – Posterous. (well the important part here is My friends who, I don’t know about other bloggers yet). However, after reading this post, they won’t nod so readily, because blogging behemoth Wordpress has launched the same feature now.
Wordpress.com users can now post to their blogs using email.
This bit of update follows the popular comment by Email feature they added a few weeks back. It certainly simplifies blogging on wp a lot simpler as the feature can be accessed from any device. You can send email from any email client, whether in a browser, on your desktop, or from your cell phone, and as much formatting will be retained as possible. And much like Posterous, multiple image attachments will be converted into a gallery of the images on your post.
The drawback however (in my opinion, others consider this agood feature and it is in a business sense) is that MP3 attachment or embedding video requires separate account upgrades. You need space upgrade to embed music and videopress upgrade to embed videos. In posterosu there is no such restriction.
I wouldn’t have liked to compare Posterous and Wordpress really, but I don’t see this upgrade as anything but pulling in the same features as Posterous has done in a bid to stop their growth. Posterous has been gaining ground offlate and has been pulling in a lot of high profile users as well to its fold. Essentially becoming a personal space to share for many falling between blog posts and tweets. Perhaps Wordpress wanted to nip things right in the bud and not let the advent or features of Posterous be any serious threat later, though right now they both are on different planes.
However, Posterous hasn’t found favour among a lot of us because it let us post by email. I think what prodded a lot of people into trying it was because being simple was in its DNA, every Posterous blog look the same (though brilliantly minimalist and classy). It doesn’t have any visible restrictions and is easy in all sense, from blogging to commenting to sharing the blog, even registering for Posterous is so simple that it doesn’t even require a registration form, you just mail it. Adding features better than this can’t compete with the simplicity it provides.
Compare this to WP’s move – it is complex in almost every sense, except maybe for posting a small para about rome and posting picutres of the Vatican. Space, upgrade, secret email, go to the dashboard to enable. Not working.
However, that is simply a small comparision of the two platforms. For a lot of Wordpress.com users and there aremillions of them, this might be just eh feature they are looking for. And they might not even know about Posterous yet. So in that way, the evolution is good and certainly in the right direction.
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Posterous and wordpress , i think are at 2 ends of the spectrum.
Any ways recent interview with posterous on download squad revealed that their next feature is templates and themes.Atleast i am eagerly waiting for that
Is this only for wp.com users, or will people with their own WP installs also have this in 2.8? posterous is cute and all but i don’t care about a hosted service. i want that feature on *my* site.