After 5 long years of providing a free platform where you and I could post our content for the world to see and read, Posterous is shutting their doors and turning off their mobile app for good. YIKES!! Sound familiar?
Google bought Picnik.com, a free online photo editing site, and then did the same thing. Now Twitter acquired Posterous… are you sensing the online trend? It can be frustrating for sure, but what do you want/expect for free?
The Big fish eat the little fish, and then it’s the hungry fisherman that suffers. So who will be affected?
Here’s the email going out to those of us who have content on their site. They did a great job of marketing and getting us on board, but now they’re kicking us all off with this warning:
Posterous launched in 2008. Our mission was to make it easier to share photos and connect with your social networks. Since joining Twitter almost one year ago, we’ve been able to continue that journey, building features to help you discover and share what’s happening in the world – on an even larger scale.
On April 30th, we will turn off posterous.com and our mobile apps in order to focus 100% of our efforts on Twitter. This means that as of April 30, Posterous Spaces will no longer be available either to view or to edit.
Right now and over the next couple months until April 30th, you can download all of your Posterous Spaces including your photos, videos, and documents.
Here are the steps:
- Go to http://posterous.com/#backup.
- Click to request a backup of your Space by clicking “Request Backup” next to your Space name.
- When your backup is ready, you’ll receive an email.
- Return to http://posterous.com/#backup to download a .zip file.
If you want to move your site to another service, WordPress and Squarespace offer importers that can move all of your content over to either service. Just remember: you need to back up your Spaces by April 30.
We’d like to thank the millions of Posterous users who have supported us on our incredible journey. We hope to provide you with as easy a transition as possible, and look forward to seeing you on Twitter. Thank you.
Sachin Agarwal, Founder and CEO
Don’t you wish sites like these shared some kind of warning or subliminal disclaimer up front:
Yeah right~ So do I sound disappointed? Nah… Of course I am!! I spent a lot of time building my “UnGuided Missile” presence on their platform. I helped promote and support their site the whole way. But I didn’t buy them, so I guess I’ll be packing my bags like the rest of you and moving on down the road I mean super-highway.
Be sure to “BACKUP” your content as they suggest, or it’s gone forever. They’ll email you a link to download it when it’s ready. Don’t get me wrong here, I love Google and Twitter, but I’m taking my Posterous stuff over to WordPress, and I just hope that Google and Twitter aren’t listening, and that they’ve never heard of WordPress! lol~
