The race is on to become the dominant media sharing site on Twitter, with favorites like TwitPic and newcomers including PhotoBucket’s TwitGoo vying for popularity as Twitter begins to hit the mainstream. Now Posterous is looking to join the race with a new API that developers can integrate into their Twitter apps with a minimal amount of effort.
We’re big fans of Posterous, the dead-simple blogging tool that makes it incredibly easy to post text, photos, and other media online. To post a photo or post to the site, you simply send an Email message to the generic post@posterous.com address, and the site does the rest. And you can optionally have the service automatically syndicate each of these posts to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and a number of other services.
Now, Posterous is looking to become even more convenient. Its new API allows developers to add Posterous support to their Twitter clients, which means you’ll soon be able to send photos to the service from your iPhone or desktop much the same way you would with TwitPic or one of its many competitors (assuming the clients integrate the service – more on that later).
But Posterous isn’t looking to simply serve as yet another competitor offering a near-identical featureset. Instead, the company believes that its blogging platform is superior to the basic photo galleries offered by other services (and Michael agrees – he’s been posting his photos here). The service supports multiple photo uploads at once, which are automatically placed into photo galleries, and can also generate embeddable players for audio and video files (though its API is starting off with support for images only). Users can optionally use their own domain names with the service, which means that they can more easily track analytics. And finally, users can download media in its original format, while some competitors only offer compressed versions for download.
I prefer Posterous to the other image platforms because it’s much more flexible. But as I wrote yesterday about TwitGoo, the key to the service’s success (at least as a TwitPic alternative) will lie in getting integrated into popular Twitter clients like TweetDeck or Tweetie. It’s not clear how selective these clients are at this point, but they’re going to have have to start making choices, otherwise users are going to be overwhelmed with the number of services they have at their disposal. That said, Posterous is making the process as easy as possible on developers, as it uses the “exact same methods, parameters, and response codes” as TwitPic.
I’m just impressed that they got @rainnwilson on their side.
What confuses me is if Twitter doesn’t even have a successful business model how can these other companies have successful models.
Of course if any of these companies want products for the K-12 educational arena, they could always contact me.
As long as Twitter is in operation and has a robust following then these 3rd party sites will still flourish. With regards to Posterous, Twitter integration is just a small piece of their business model. If Twitter were to be non-existent it wouldn’t hurt Posterous. As for TwitPic thats a different story.
Michael, you are exactly right. We love Twitter and we’re working to integrate with is as much as possible. But it’s only one part of what we do.
Our bigger story is to be the place to post everything. And people are doing this now via email, the bookmarklet, and soon with our iPhone app.
And they aren’t just posting to Posterous or just to Twitter… we autopost to flickr, facebook, and all the major blog platforms.
We hope that through our wide range of posting methods and supported destinations, we will be *the* way everyone posts to the web.
Why not just buy twitpic?
@Sachin Any idea when the IPhone app would be available? Since posting is through email, I’m just curious why you are releasing an IPhone app.
I’m rooting for @noaheverett, the one man show behind Twitpic.com
Same here, he had the vision first.; Besides, there is very little revenue potential that I can see, so his low overhead might actually give him a boost.
We’re a two-man show. Both of us (Sachin and myself) are designers and engineers, and we run everything on the site, including design, engineering, scaling, sys admin, biz dev, marketing, customer support.
I guess we have twice the resources, arguably.
You have seed funding (more resources)… twitpic does not… (yet)
Another big factor these startups should be evaluating is if twitter will continue to remain ’silent’ on these third party addons. I can imagine that twitter deciding to purchase or build its own upload/poll/shorturl service which would be the new ‘default’ service would seriously knock back the competition.
After all, Even if twitter did a ‘bad’ job of handling image uploads, alot of the need for services like twitpic would be gone.
It may not happen soon, but I predict it to happen eventually. As twitter gets more and more funding they will be under significant pressure to show growth and additional revenue #’s and taking over these third party markets could be a significant step towards showing that.
Dan, this is true of twitpic and twitgoo and any number of me-too twitter-only apps.
However, we’re tackling something bigger — we want to be the premium best-in-class way you post.
For instance, thousands of people use us to post to Facebook, even though Facebook has a ton of features around photo/video sharing. Why? Because we give the premium experience — full image galleries that are downloadable, email comments, and support for all files.
People will always want their own websites they can call home in addition to their Facebook and Twitter profiles — and we’re aiming to be that place.
-Garry
cofounder, posterous.com
This is getting crazy…why are you guys so over-obsessed with Twitter!?
Get over it already – what happened to the old TechCrunch?
Why not just create a TwitCrunch site?
URL shortening services are a dime a dozen – looks like twitter pic services are heading down the same path.
As Twitter goes mainstream his role as a platform becomes more critical, so soon we’ll be seening even more of these developments.
Curiously enough, many TechCruch readers have ablready started using Twitter as their universal ID. Just take a look at the comments.
OMFG, The A-List is behind Posterous as the next Twitter.
I almost can’t believe it, but then again I can.
In 2 years every other post on here will be about Posterous. Mike Arrington will make single posts with no text titled “Posterous” and get 1000 replies.
Not because of any technical reason or need for the service, simply because it was “chosen”.
Mark my words. bookmark this comment. It will happen. I can tell.
Our service will be large by then also. But only on technical merit and the force of elite LA developers.
PUMP N DUMP
I’m with you Chris. I’m so, totally with you on this.
hehehe.. I’m with you on this Chris!!
I think TwipPic will continue to be the defacto because it does one thing. Shows pictures in Twitter. It’s dead simple and has a strong foot hold. Sometimes too many features can be a deterrent. The mom watching the Oprah show today will not get Posturous, even though it’s a great service, but will know how to send a picture of her kid to TwitPic.com. That why Twitter is so successful, it does one thing!
I like the Posterous lets you have multiple pictures in an email and puts them into a gallery for one Tweet or Facebook update.
I can easily let all of my friends see the pictures I’m taking without worrying if they are on Facebook, Twitter or neither (since they can easily go to the Posterous page).
And the pages are much cleaner on Posterous than on TwitPic.
I am rooting for Twitpic, its a real success story, like Markus Frind. I would love to see the guy end up with some money in his pocket. In this dour economy its reassuring to see things like this happening.
i was against twitpic but now i am all for it. having read the developer tweets he seem like a good fellow . so hopefully twitter buys him out and end this pic race. svd fully behind twitpic in the photo race.
This is fast becoming a crowded space that could be wiped out the moment Twitter actually implements pics into Twitter, either themselves or through an acquisition.
I started using Posterous after hearing about it from @guykawasaki. I was tired of having inappropriate ads next to pictures of my kids on TwitPic. Even though I started to use Posterous for pictures (and I still do) now I have come to use it for my own personal blog. After starting and quickly abandoning multiple blogspot blogs, I found the simplicity of Posterous to be liberating. I no longer get caught up worrying about the design and focus more on sharing stuff that I thing is neat and maybe my opinion every now and then. I also enjoy the ’subscriptions’ and ‘explore’ features of Posterous. I read Posterous blogs completely separately from the rest of my RSS feeds …because they are special …because they are part of my own personal community.
I recommend Posterous to everyone. It’s great to hear that they are taking it slow but still improving the service all the time.
I can also say that both Garry and Sachin have personally responded to support requests that I have made, making their customer service top notch. Thanks guys.
This look promising. TwitPic needs to watch their back
. So far TwitPic has done a great job though.
I’ve been a big Posterous fan for a while. Their platform (dead-simple, e-mail posting, easy to understand, beautiful output) has big potential for the future. If any of these startups have a chance to become truly mainstream they need broad-ranging appeal to non-techies. Posterous has that.
I just am looking forward to:
iPhone App!!!! PLEASE HURRY!!!
Themes/betterlook on the posterous page
Better facebook connect choices
Better edit/tagging system on posterous
…and maybe a MAC OS app.
Keep up the good work guys!
Congrats guys! We recently moved our company blog to the Posterous platform and haven’t looked back. It’s so easy. Let’s hope Tweetdeck or Seesmic think so too.
posterous is just easier. i take a pic on my iphone and email it to post@posterous.com and then it is autoposted to twitter and facebook as well as my posterous blog. as a bonus, its ui/ue is way better than any other twitter photo sharing service. the minute you try posterous you will never look back.
http://tweetube.com is much easier than posterous.com .. it just is …
There are a lot of other companies that do the same ! Shozu, CellSpin, TwitPic, Lifecast, and many more. Not sure what is new here !
Do folks do any market research before they start a company these days ?
Everyone and their brother now wants to do something on or for twitter
Jenn, this is actually just one small piece of what our company does. We want to be *the* place to post anything. We’ve been focussing on email so far, but also have a great bookmarklet and soon an iPhone app.
We’re the easiest place to share rich media on the web. Try us our and let me know what you think.