It's Official: I am Moving from Blogging to Lifestreaming

Posterous continuous to get insanely useful. They just added auto-posting today to YouTube and Friendfeed. This continuous pipeline of innovation, plus some great advice I got from my friends Stowe Boyd (we talked about Flow when I was in Germany), Jeremiah Owyang (we discussed daily publishing in San Francisco) and Dwight Silverman (one hub, not two says Mr. S), convinced me it's time to make the jump.

This site will become my primary publishing hub - my new home on the web. Meanwhile the spokes will become the social networks and platforms where we all spend time. Today that's Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. Tomorrow, who knows. My old site will stay online for the archives but I will not be putting any more content up on the old site. Please update your RSS reader to my new feed. I am excited by the change. After five years of publishing, this seems like the right thing to do.

51 comments

Jun 25, 2009

Kevin Skobac said...

Big move! you've convinced me to test out Posterous too... why'd you choose them, though, over Tumblr? Also - I'm missing disqus commenting - it seemed more friendly to people and more universal

Jun 25, 2009

Kevin Skobac said...

also i'm quickly missing re-posting! seems like a feature they'd explore in the future

Jun 25, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

Honestly, the design is better over there but the features rock here. Especially auto-posting and email. They will get the theming part right next.

Jun 25, 2009

Aaron B. Hockley said...

Bummer.... I'll be honest, I really prefer to only see your longer, more detail pieces like we were used to seeing at Micro Persuasion, without the other shorter/video/random things that I see here. Is there any way to subscribe to only the "meaty" pieces?

Jun 25, 2009

Tac Anderson said...

So I'm curious why you decided not to use this as the hub and keep the blog as one of the spokes?

Jun 25, 2009

Byron New Media said...

I have found posterous very powerful,

Jun 26, 2009

Ivan Pope said...

Hey, when you get to a fork in the road, take it!

Jun 26, 2009

brzy56 said...

I'm with you Aaron

Jun 26, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

Tac, double content will penalize you with Google.

Jun 26, 2009

Evan Roberts said...

...But even Posterous has a blog? Seems like something will be missing without the depth of a blog.

Jun 26, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

For those of you who want just the essays, you can get it here. I will put it in the title of these posts. http://bit.ly/MQz1M

Jun 26, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

@Evan Posterous is a blogging platform - but so much more.

Jun 26, 2009

Norbert Mayer-Wittmann said...

One thing I can't figure out is how to make permalinks - is posterous basically saying that the "atomic level" (for linking) is the post?

Jun 26, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

This page is the permalink.

Jun 26, 2009

Norbert Mayer-Wittmann said...

Yea, and this is a little bit of a problem -- it shows a disrespect for that importance of citation (and that is too bad).

I would have no problem if it were hierarchical and CENTERED around the page, but basically prohibiting citation within the page is foolish (you COULD say it's ahead of the curve, but that would be open to debate ;)...

So this is a bug, not a feature.

In this particular case I am the "customer" - and the customer is always....

:) nmw

Jun 26, 2009

Norbert Mayer-Wittmann said...

*the* importance of citation (editing would be a nice feature, too ;)

Jun 26, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

NMW, I don't follow. Can you clarify?

Jun 26, 2009

Norbert Mayer-Wittmann said...

I can't link to anything within the page/post -- no nested replies, etc.

This would be fine if all EVERYONE did was to post (but then who would need comments at all? ;)

Maybe comments are indeed a thing of the past - I think what killed them was Google's "nofollow".

So basically this "within post" stuff is a HUGE can of worms, and I don't think I am up to dealing with EVERY individual aspect of it at the moment.

All I am saying right now is that to disable linking to sections within a post/page is a little foolhardy (IMHO).

Jun 26, 2009

Rikin said...

Steve, after talking about this the other day it was so difficult to visualize aggregating your 'outlets' all in one. But this layout and the flow seems to really work. I've got my site, my tumblr, twitter, facebook, linkedin, and a whole bunch of other streams going on that if this works out for you maybe I'll have to take the plunge. Good luck with this effort - I'm hoping we all learn something from it.

Jun 26, 2009

Norbert Mayer-Wittmann said...

Well, if I dig into the HTML source I can find something like a permalink (e.g. for the above comment it would be http://www.steverubel.com/its-official-i-am-moving-from-blogging-to-lif#pcomment_commentunit_418428 ) -- but it isn't really user-friendly to make that so difficult.

I agree that taking away a lot of the structure make the page look a lot cleaner, but I think it's a little overboard -- almost seems like draconian aversion to basic principles of citation.

And that, I feel, is a folly -- and should be fixed (otherwise this software will probably remain a wallflower).

Jun 26, 2009

boockit said...

first time being here,Amazing

Jun 26, 2009

Eyal Sela said...

Steve, what is the fundamental difference between posterous and a regular blog? or better yet, between posterous and Friendfeed? (I, as the reader of the site, don't care what is the platform you use to publish content...)

Jun 26, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

Eyal, I would say that Posterous is more free form. It can be just a photo or a movie or three words or 10,000. Blogs really have posts.

Jun 26, 2009

Eban Crawford said...

Good on you, Steve!

I read your post and had to check things out. I have had a posterous account, but never used it. I looked at it as Tumblr, without the style. Now I have all my auto-posting setup, to Tumblr as well, go figure.

I am going to give this a shot using it as you do, as the hub feeding the spokes. I am rather excited.

Thanks for the heads up as I would have never logged in here again. Posterous would have become just another unused account in the collection.

Cheers,
Eban

Jun 26, 2009

Eyal Sela said...

Can't you do that with friendfeed?

Jun 26, 2009

Franlk Cseh said...

so if I don't have a blog yet, can I start with a free lifestream site ?
OK. I can google for it.
:)

Jun 26, 2009

Flavio Melo said...

I made the move to posterous a few weeks ago. It is a new life. So much easier!

It is a dream!

My advice to everyone is: go there!

Jun 26, 2009

citingbaltimore said...

Whatever happened to "make every post a signal"? Now I feel like I'm getting too much from this RSS.

Jun 26, 2009

Matthias Faller said...

This encouraged me to do the same. But, how do you handle the occurring doubling in FriendFeed resulted from the autopost feature? E.g. You post a video to posterous, it will get posted to Youtube and FriendFeed. But FriendFeeds puls also you Youtube Videos. Now the same video is listed twice in FriendFied.

Jun 26, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

@Mathias Very simple, I use the special email feature. It's a feature Posterous has. I send email to a special posterous address just to get it into Posterous and Facebook (see autopost settings). Then Friendfeed scoops up my RSS feed. Once that's done, Friendfeed syndicates into Twitter. Things only should appear once in each place.

Jun 26, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

@Eyal not really. Not like this.
@Citing Baltimore - nearly every post will be quality

Jun 26, 2009

Sean Brady said...

Thanks Matthias for the question and Steve for the answer. I was wondering the same thing.

Jun 26, 2009

Christopher Gizzi said...

I've been thinking about what you did, Steve, and I'm not sure I get why, yet. Despite your post - and others since - I don't understand why you gave up your previous platform for Posterous. Lifestreaming is a concept and not a format per se. And Posterous is just another tumble blog, another content management system; I just can't see the difference.

I guess, I'm wrestling with the decision to go with Posterous over some self-hosted system. Because when the next big platform comes out, what do you do? Leave this behind and have two archived systems - your blog and this?

I've introduced a lifestream to my blog as a separate page from my content. But I could have easily included all of my micro-formats like Twitter, Plurk, etc, and media posts from Vimeo & Flickr into the main content area of the blog and turn the blog's format into more of what Posterous is like.

Perhaps your previous content management system didn't have the power of WordPress (which I use as my lifestream platform). And don't get me wrong... I love the idea of a lifestream and can see how it can be better than the classic blog. But why throw away your old content system for one that might not be supported in a few years.

Thanks to you, though, I'm going to give Posterous a shot but I'm not sure I want to use it as a hub... and maybe that's why I don't fully understand where you're coming from. Posterous might be easy to use but I don't know if its any different than other CMS systems. Maybe you'll continue to share how you set yours up so I can understand the logic behind it all.

Jun 28, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

@Chris I appreciate your feedback. Life however is about taking chances. If you don't then you won't grow. The simplicity and elegance of the Posterous platform and my desire to serve you in new and innovative ways made me realize it was time to shake things up. I want to focus on what's next and live it so that I can be ahead of the game in advising my clients.

Jun 28, 2009

Andrea Contino said...

I just did the same with my primary website. Just one question Steve. Do you use only gmail.com or also some desktop client such as outlook, Mail, Entourage...etc.?

Jun 28, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

@Andrea I am using Gmail.

Jun 28, 2009

Andrea Contino said...

Thx. Using hotmail here :) Have only some probs with fonts. But I find posterous the best and fastest way to blog today

Jun 29, 2009

Jordi Soler said...

Posterous really changed the way we perceive blogging. Too many blogs with too many words and too little real content: this is way better, I couldn't agree more.

Jun 29, 2009

Meri Aaron Walker said...

What a provocative topic! And it occurs to me, the more I reflect about what Steve's said about the switch is that the move to posterous is much more about how you want to share the stream of thoughts you're observing than about the format you're chosing to manage the content digitally. I was struck from the beginning about the autoposting and emailing tricks and love the browser button.Those tools just fit the way I move. Because of that fit, I've been thinking about bringing my biz blog over into for the last 4-5 months, daily. Still not sure how to integrate the two focii though. I started the posterous to track things I was observing and reflecting on that fall between the lines of business and personal. I'm still trying to keep my wordpress blog "on topic" as a biz blog. Wondering what you think about making distinctions like that... Maybe they're losing their punch these days as we're thinking faster and faster in a swarm...?

Jul 01, 2009

Chuck Falzone said...

Posterous does have some nice features, but it seems to lack one really important one for lifestreaming: pulling in content from other sources. If it's going to be a hub--a place where folks come to see all the stuff I've been thinking about and doing online--there needs to be a way to tell it, when I bookmark a site on Delicious, pull it in. When I make a Disqus comment, pull it in, etc.

Going the other way, and posting through Posterous out to other sites doesn't always work-- e.g. making a Disqus comment. Or even adding photos to Flickr. I can add them at high resolution and they appear at a nice size for the web automatically on Tumblr. But if I use Posterous and go the other direction, I'm going to lose that hi-res photo on Flickr, no? (Maybe I'm not, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

For me, a combination of Tumblr and FriendFeed works best now, tho not without its hassles. Posterous would solve some of those hassles, but without being able to pull in feeds, it's a non-starter for me.

Jul 02, 2009

Jose Paul Martin said...

Welcome onboard! I think you'll see alot more interesting conversations on Posterous... not to mention the cool plans they have!

Aug 01, 2009

Jim Duncan said...

Here's the question I keep coming back to with Posterous (and other 3rd party platforms) ... who owns the content, and what happens to it if Posterous shuts down? I've been blogging for ~4.5 years, and I own the content - it's all there in the WP database should I choose to port to another platform.

With Posterous, can I do that?

A bigger question is - should I care?

Aug 01, 2009

Jose Paul Martin said...

I think that's a very good question. If you're making money from the lifestream - I think it shud matter. I asked the same question when I was using Gmail. With so much data being stored there... this is always a concern. Fortunately, there are now backup programs available for gmail, i think it will be a matter of time before something appears for Posterous.

If ur lifestreaming... and your having fun - then no you shouldnt worry. Other thoughts are much appreciated.

Aug 01, 2009

Sachin Agarwal said...

@Jim you own all the content you post to Posterous. And you can export it all our of our service anytime using our API:
http://posterous.com/api

We'd never lock you in.

Aug 01, 2009

Jim Duncan said...

@Sachin - Thank you so much for your response, and for the speed of the response. I feel a bit better now about using your great product/service/thing? :)

My larger question remains ... how many people care about their content ownership?

Aug 01, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

Everything is also backed up in your mail program.

Aug 01, 2009

Jose Paul Martin said...

Not if you're using the posterous bookmarklet. *Gmail yes...

Aug 01, 2009

Jose Paul Martin said...

I certainly dont worry about content ownership 'nowadays'. There's a great blur on copyright now... I've always wondered whether copying whole texts (using a posterous bookmarklet), and just providing a link is sufficient. I guess those who are really concerned about their copyright will protect the information via PDF or some other means.

But at the end of the day, its when you share information that it really adds value.

Aug 01, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

Jose good point!

Aug 30, 2009