Posterous, the dead simple service that makes it super easy to share your blog posts and media across the web, has launched a feature users have been waiting for since the site’s launch: themes. Sure, most of us have gotten used to the site’s standard white and yellow layout by now, but with a greater variety the site may be able to appeal to a broader user base.
Posterous is launching the the feature with five built-in themes, including one designed by well known Tumblr theme creator Bill Israel. Posterous is also allowing users to change their blog header and to custom modify any colors on their site.
Beyond basic visual changes, Posterous has bigger plans for its theme engine. Widgets, for one, will have their own open API so that anyone can write widgets that can then be embedded into Posterous users blogs. For more technical folks, the site will also be introducing more features that will gradually turn Posterous into a content platform. Examples of this are the PostLocation block that Posterous added recently internally so that they could support GPS / Geocoded locations for posts.
People often compare Posterous to Tumblr due to the simplicity of the way to upload content, but Posterous is leveraging Tumblr’s set of themes. This is a huge step for Posterous, considering Tumblr has thousands of beautiful themes that exist out there, and it’s a matter of changing just a few lines of HTML to convert them to full-fledged Posterous themes.
Posterous has seen enormous growth over the last 12 months. The site is doing 10 times the traffic they were doing one year ago, and over the last 30 days alone, traffic has gone up to 4.1 million unique visits worldwide, according to Quantcast. Posterous is proving that they are a force to be reckoned with.
In June 2009, Posterous acquired Skinkset and brought on Brett Gibson on board to the team of 3 people. Posterous has taken $740K in funding from investors like Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ferriss, Mitch Kapor, Satish Dharmaraj, Eric Hahn, and of course Y-Combinator.
I’m missing custom formatting from within an email – they should just use the atlassian style for e.g. syntax highlighting ({code})…
So is Posterous more like Ping.fm (sharing content around the web) or more like Tumblr? Can someone explain to me why i should care? I know there are some Posterous fans out there that can tell me why this service is so cool? Thanks.
It is like Ping.fm in that it broadcasts a message out to all the services you use however it’s much more intuitive than Ping.fm. Rather than just broadcast to everything at once it allows you to direct specific content (pictures auto post to Flickr, for example) and it does it all through email. It’s really worth a try, with this announcement it might become my full time blog.
I’m not afraid to say it. Posterous WILL be the biggest blogging platform sooner rather than later. This is a HUGE feature!
This is awesome. I do like the clean look of Posterous so I won’t slam mine with tons of HTML, but I’d love to be able to change the header to a customized header. Great news for Posterous.
My company is setting up blogs for our customers – hundreds of them.
I love Posterous, but I need a blog platform that looks like it’s a proprietary product – something that I can show my customers, and set up for them, and make a buck as a reseller / implementer.
Anyone know if Posterous is planning to build a reseller network? I’ll be first in line!
Finally! More Cowbell! (inside joke between me and @garrytan)
This is huge for Posterous. I like the simplicity of it, but this will be great. This will get more users for sure.
I tried switching the theme on my Posterous page and got the following message:
Not ready for you yet — but coming soon!
You may want to consider revising the title of this post: “Posterous Still Plans to Add Theme Support”.
This is fixed now — server needed to be refreshed!
What is their revenue model?
Lay and Pray
Looks really slick. Great job @Posterous team.
Garry, this is great news about theme support! Keep up the great work @posterous! Im a fan, posterous works great, emailing posts is the only way to do it if your on the go and want to create a relevant, live blog.
Posterous is gonna be huge! Amazing name and branding. Uses the word “post” and “ous” which means full of or having. They created a new word with its very own meaning. Perfect makings of a great brand.
An amazing name?
That’s not an amazing name. It is long and hard to spell.
Am I slow or what?
I use Ping.fm all the time, but I’m trying to figure out what’s the relevancy of sending an email to post something.
I’m trying to understand how it works. More like some people who still don’t get how Twitter works?
Hopefully they are adding the capability to responding to bug reports and UI issues. The bookmarklet tool is horrible if you have more than posterous site; the user management tools do not seem to operate in any systematic way (a public site requires way to much moderation).
That said, I love it!
Posterous only has a subset of tumblr’s features and why is everyone talking about it? Tumblr launches a feature and Posterous copies it and its NEWS?
I’m one of the users who’ve been waiting for this! I’m off to play with it now.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. According to http://posterous.com/faq Posterous has a 1 GB limit. When will Posterous copy Tumblr and remove the 1 GB limit?
I love it. Thanks for letting me know!
This dog will hunt.
Posterous is great. Best way to share pictures, videos, etc.
The only thing missing is the ability for visitors to share (retweet/email) your posts.
I don’t know why they don’t do it, seems to me it would only take a “sharethis” link option.
Otherwise, I love it. Tumblr is UGLY.