I make no secret of my dislike of Posterous. It’s not that the Posterous system sucks. It doesn’t. In fact it’s a great way to take notes and keep thoughts in order. I use it on and off. But how it’s used it as a shortcut version of social media that sucks. As a corporate blog it sucks. As a way to curate content that represents a corporate brand it sucks. As a way to interact and create conversation, which is what social media is all about, copying and pasting stuff to Posterous sucks.
I’m not for it. Never have been, never will be. And I’m not on my own. Says James Dunaway:
DON’T republish other authors’ work. This will quickly get you labeled as splog (spam blog) or content farm. All your blog posts should be original work. It’s perfectly acceptable to respond to another blog post with your own, just make sure your site links back to the original post.
Note that James says responding. That’s what I’m doing here. Using what he said, then adding my perspective. It extends the conversation that James started and takes it in another direction. But it doesn’t simply grab a chunk of his work and copy it to my post.
Maybe I’m being idealistic. Perhaps I’m becoming plain ornery. But I’m backing my judgement on this. And I’m glad to have guys like James in my corner.
Photo: Maria Reyes-McDavis
Posterous is a FANTASTIC way to shortcut social media and to use as a corporate blog.
It’s fantastically easy to get started and even technophobe businesses understand it enough to use social, talk about themselves and share observations of their industry.
If you dive in and have a look at the great functionality it offers and use it properly, it’s great!
Used out of the box without proper thought or understanding is like giving a small child a bag of shiny fish hooks.
I recommend having another look.
Hi Ben
As a way to get started as a blogger, sure, Posterous is a great tool. And yes, it has some excellent advanced functionality. With these things I have no beef. But it’s *how* it’s the way it’s used to scrape content from other sites that I have issue with. If Posterous is used, as you put it, to “write about themselves and share observations of their industry” then it gets a tick.
But all too often it’s used to copy and paste content and auto-broadcast it to a multitude of social profiles with little or no regard to the intended audience. That’s not social media, it’s just media.
“copy and paste content and auto-broadcast it to a multitude of social profiles with little or no regard to the intended audience. That’s not social media, it’s just media”
That’s just spam. But why blame Posterous? Poor Posterous ;0(