Blogging Platform Posterous To Shut Down April 30

New submitter Mike Allton writes with the announcement from Posterous that the blogging platform will close at the end of April, after being acquired last year by Twitter. "It's been suggested that people should use platforms like Posterous or Google+ for their blog, and I think this is a perfect example of why that's a bad idea. When you use someone else's platform, you don't own your content and you don't have control over the platform. Do you have a Posterous account? What will you do with all your posts and content?"

A warning to people exporting to WordPress

[Chrisq]

The WordPress import [wordpress.com] uses an XML file for import of text, tags, etc. but reads the images from Posterous while parsing the xml. This means that people who delete their blogs before import, or presumably who wait until after the end of April so not get their images imported, The images are in the backup .zip file but if you wait too long you could have to re-add them all manually.

wget it and forget it. err.. rehost it somewhere.

[atomize]

wget -r -l inf -k -E -p -nc http://www.yourposterousblog.com/ [yourposterousblog.com]

Re:this sucks

[noh8rz10]

the summary is being a bit overdramatic. you can download all of your posts into a zip: http://blog.posterous.com/posterous-spaces-backup-tool-available-now [posterous.com].

Re:Who?

[sootman]

They were a new, easy-to-use blogging platform that came out around the same time as Tumblr -- another new, easy-to-use blogging platform. You know how it often happens that two similar things come out around the same time and one takes off and one doesn't? That.

One of their key features was that you could post from email, which a) made blogging accessible to a lot of people because "hey, posting is as easy as emailing!", and b) it worked (and worked well) from early smartphones before Apps took over the world. And you didn't have to make an account with them at first -- your email was your account.

They had some good ideas, but that's just how these things go. For whatever reason, one company hits what others miss.

Besides, they were bought by Twitter last year, so it's not like the owners are hungry, crying, and alone as they shut down their service. Most people figured they'd close up shop a lot sooner once they got bought.