Thoughts on Posterous - New Blogging Platform

The other day, I posted asking people's opinions of the new blogging platform Posterous.  Not getting any response (I know at least a couple of my Facebook friends use it, so I was hoping for at least one response), I decided to just jump in and do it myself.  I tried a couple of posts and it is just so easy!  I do love that aspect of it.  Mom, even you could blog using this platform, as all you have to do is know how to send an email.

The really cool thing about Posterous is exactly that.  All you have to do is send an email and POOF!  You're a blogger, with a nicely formatted blog post that includes any picture you might have sent (it even converts a picture link to the picture itself if that's all you provide).  Once you've done your first post, you can then go and set up your Posterous page, which is also incredibly easy to do.  You don't even have to do that if you don't want to, though it's always good to have at least some profile information so that people may want to read your blog when they stumble upon it.

That being said, I will probably not use it anymore, at least not for basic blogging.
Why do I feel that way, when it's so cool?  I mean, you can have Posterous automatically post your stuff wherever you want!  Most people have email on their phones now, so you can blog from your phone! You can link it to your other blog, like I did this one.  If you noticed in the last few entries, it says at the bottom "Posted via web from 'Dave's Random Thoughts'" or "Posted via email from 'Dave's Random Thoughts'".  This indicates that it was automatically cross-posted from Posterous to here.  You can also have it post directly to Twitter, Facebook, or a large number of other sites.  It really can be a one-stop shopping spree.

However, I'm not going to keep up my current Posterous blog, and it's mainly because I'm finding it a bit inconvenient to have both this one and that one with the same content.  One thing about cross-posting your Posterous blog to your other blog is that any formatting tricks you use in your original blog won't be reflected in your cross-post.  My "read more" jumps on this blog?  They don't come through on the cross-post.  I had to come here and put them in manually after the fact, and the formatting got a bit wonky a couple of times until I fixed it.

So you won't see any more cross-posts from Posterous to here.  However, I do love the platform.  I know I've said it before, but it is so easy to use.  You can post via email, you can post on the web.  You can use the bookmarklet they provide and just grab content from any other site that you want to highlight.  See a video that you want to share with your readers?  Just use the "share" bookmarklet that you can put in your bookmarks toolbar to grab it, put in what you want to say about it in the box provided, and voila!  Instant blog post.  It really is that easy.

What I will probably do, because I do love it a lot, is actually make a second blog.  I've been considering that for a little while now.  As long-time readers know (and my description of this blog on the sidebar says), I was going to be including posts about the Vancouver Canucks on here.  As my cousin said (and she wasn't the only one), she'll probably ignore the hockey posts and just read my other stuff.  The few hockey posts I have posted here have been pretty much ignored.

So why not just start another, Canucks-related blog instead?

I may just do that.  If I do, I'll post a link here, of course, for those of you who actually do care.

And for those of you who are interested in what Posterous can look like (you'll have already seen all but two of the posts here), my current Posterous blog is here.