Exitless.com

Betting On Posterous

I’ve been blogging sporadically since 2000, though much of my writing has been lost to the sands of (internet) time. I started with Blogger, and eventually moved onto Greymatter, Movable Type, Textpattern, and finally, WordPress.

Greymatter and Textpattern were my favorites, but the former was abandoned by Noah Grey and I feared the latter would eventually suffer the same fate, so the move to WordPress was one of necessity. Unfortunately, I’ve never felt comfortable with WordPress, nor enjoyed using it.

It’s probably my fault. Ten years ago I would have spent hours reading and dissecting and experimenting with WordPress until I knew it inside and out. I know longer have that desire, and because of that, using WordPress to publish my website felt like lifting a sledgehammer to push a tack into a cork board. It’s not fun anymore, and the proof comes in a grand total of 8 posts in 2009.

I want to create with less friction. I want something lighter, simpler, and fun. Something that makes me excited to create, requires less maintenance, that works as well with smaller posts and random links as it does with longer essays.

I considered both Tumblr, which I’ve used and enjoyed, and Posterous, of which I knew very little. I was ready to choose Tumblr; more for familiarity than anything else. But after spending a little time checking out Posterous, I’ve changed my mind.

Both Tumblr and Posterous can be used for anything, and are, but Tumblr seems more geared to bringing in content from other sources to share, while the strength of Posterous is creating your own content and pushing it out to sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Of course, as always, their are caveats.

I have less control over Posterous than hosting my site on a server I’m paying for. Posterous could vanish tomorrow and take my content with it, so I’ll be looking into backup options.
Posterous pushes the community aspect with favorites and and other nonsense that I couldn’t care less about and will have to ignore.
MarsEdit doesn’t work with Posterous, though the developer hopes to add support soon. In the meantime I’m going to see if I can use WriteRoom and email along with the bookmarklet to add content. I like simple tools.

So no deal breakers, and though bumps in the road are certain, I’m excited to try something new. Hopefully I can make it 9 posts in 2010. That's me, always shooting for the stars.