Slashdot Mirror
Blogging Platform Posterous To Shut Down April 30
New submitter Mike Allton writes with the announcement from Posterous that the blogging platform will close at the end of April, after being acquired last year by Twitter. "It's been suggested that people should use platforms like Posterous or Google+ for their blog, and I think this is a perfect example of why that's a bad idea. When you use someone else's platform, you don't own your content and you don't have control over the platform. Do you have a Posterous account? What will you do with all your posts and content?"
im going to have to post all my spun SEO spam articles on some other free blogging platform now ...
Nevere heard of them.
Guess nothing of value will be lost.
And there is PostHaven now, launched by a co-founder of Posterous.
The article gives specific instructions how to save all your blog content. In some cases, move it to another host. But you must do it before they shutdown. So the problem is ...??
I hope everyone uses markdown and can easily archive plain text copies, riight? (Not to mention those useless pic-heavy-blogs)
They wrote:
"Plus, the people at Twitter are genuinely nice folks who share our vision for making sharing simpler."
Except obviously sharing from any platform that is not Twitter.
Goodbye Posterous, whatever you were.
While I haven't read the Posterous TOS i doubt they "own" people's content... however, the issue I think that Mike was trying to highlight is while you own your content you might not be able to migrate it and/or loss access to it..
http://www.hawknest.com/
Back it up and import it somewhere else like it says in the post...
What an ironic name. The real issue is that data can't easily be moved to another platform. At least with something like WordPress you can take your data and go solo indefinitely.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Gone are the days of our lives, now its life in 156 characters or less...
... Twitter bothered to buy Posterous in the first place. If it wasn't to have a blog space, was it to just get more accounts they can push Twitter accounts on? Seems a wasted investment to me. Oh wait, they just figured it out.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
... corporate buyouts should be outlawed.
That would mean outlawing selling shares, which basically means outlawing corporations entirely. And, being a moron, you probably think that's a great idea.
The WordPress import uses an XML file for import of text, tags, etc. but reads the images from Posterous while parsing the xml. This means that people who delete their blogs before import, or presumably who wait until after the end of April so not get their images imported, The images are in the backup .zip file but if you wait too long you could have to re-add them all manually.
If I would have mod points I would have modded your post.
When corporations/companies can buy others or make fusions... it only ends up to situation where big ones go and buy the smaller ones what does bring new ideas to market but never actually end up to deliver them to citizens becauses bigger one buy it off as they don't want that citizens would have alternative for their product.
Own your content - it's the only way to be sure.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Jason Scott's team of archive panic wgetting will own your content now!
wget -r -l inf -k -E -p -nc http://www.yourposterousblog.com/
...corporations should be outlawed as immortal psychopaths. A corporation will fuck you.
When you use someone else's platform, you don't own your content and you don't have control over the platform.
This is true. On the other hand, you are also shifting the maintenance burden to someone else. Keeping the software up to date w.r.t. features, bug fixes, or at least security fixes. Fighting spam. Keeping the platform that the software runs on (operating system, hardware) usable. Making sure backups are kept up to date and regularly tested.
It's a trade-off, and there are good reasons for wanting to be in control and good reasons for wanting others to do the work.
I think the real solution to the control issue, in many cases, is to make sure it is easy to get the data out and use it, and then regularly get a copy of the data you care about and store it somewhere. Exactly like making a backup, which you should be doing no matter who hosts the data, you or someone else. If you do this, you are protected against data loss and unwanted changes.
If you make sure you always have usable backups of your data, the only thing you still need to worry about is other people using that data. To some extent, that is something you need to worry about no matter who hosts the data, but, of course, the realistic threats are somewhat different for, say, hosting the data only on computers only you have an account on vs. hosting the data on a computer that is maintained by someone else. For me, personally, I have no issue having my website on someone else's computer, but I do have an issue with this for email.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Tell that to google which is always buying companies
Nothing, I didn't post anything worthwhile to start with on that service.
I was burned when Blogger stopped supporting publishing by FTP. I'll be running my own server from now on, thank you.
Bryan
Twitter's pre-Posterous acquisitions.
That's trivial for you and me. But not for 99.999% of users of these services -- and I probably used too few nines, as most of kind would set up an own server, or perhaps even write our own code (just see what happened when Knuth was unhappy with typesetting software he used. Even if we're dumb peons in comparison, tendencies are the same). Parsing that html, ripping out the contents, figuring out how to import it into another platform... that's not something an average person can do.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
This happened with Vox. They had tools to let you move it to TypePad or WordPress. I split the difference (my Vox archive is on TypePad, new stuff on WordPress.com). That said, this, as well as the Instagram situation last December, calls out a common issue, especially with free services. How are things owned? What happens if they go away. Almost all of the pictures on my WordPress blog are hosted at Flickr. Fortunately, Flickr's TOS are somewhat better than what Instagram proposed from the ownership perspective. However, I'm screwed if they go away. I suppose I'd be better paying for hosting (and, to an extent, I do with Flickr), but I'm not sure I can fully justify it for a hobby-blog. For many, self-hosting isn't an option: they lack the skills and (even modest) equipment to do so. I could do it, but there are a million other things I'd rather do with my time. Fortunately, both WordPress and Flickr have good tools for pulling information out, so, for now, I'm going to roll with that.
So nobody can buy out family businesses when the founder retires, so they have to close. And the railway systems and airlines would have to remain fragmented into the hundreds of companies that originally started them. And failing companies would have to go bust and everybody lose their jobs instead of the good bits being sold as going concerns. Ad no Venture Capitalist would fund a startup because they could not sell out when it succeeds, thus killing most of the tech industry.
It /sometimes/ ends in situations as you describe, but a lot of takeovers are very valuable. You are looking at the small percentage that are destructive and ignoring the huge majority that allow industry to change shape in response to circumstances.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Unreadable and incomprehensible.
Please return when you are able to render a coherent thought.
What are you talking about? There are already restrictions on who can and cannot buy and sell shares. Restrictions imposed for much the same reason the GP suggested corporate buyouts should be outlawed. The reason being the detrimental societal effects that outweigh the benefit of having a perfectly free market in share trading. So clearly the only alternative is not outlawing selling shares. I'm not saying I agree with the GP. I am however saying that you should probably avoid making fatuous arguments while calling people morons.
Ah, the little worker bees who are too lazy to start their own businesses, please - tell me more of your childish theories.
I'm a Leninist, you insensitive clod!
Do you have a Posterous account?
No. In fact I'd never heard of it until now.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
And then comes they fun of SEO - trying to pass over as much Rank value to the next site... Hoping to use 301, or rel=canonical. Hence why i dip my toes shallow in sites with unknown lifespans.
Most free "cloud" services only seem to last a few years, until the vendor realizes they're not making money. Using a big-name vendor doesn't help - remember Google Wave, Apple MobileMe, Wal-Mart Music, Microsoft Windows Live, etc. The lives of these things are surprisingly short. About as long as a cool restaurant.
Don't get locked into a "cloud" service that stores your data in a form that can't be readily exported to somewhere else.
Nowadays, I use Octopress, having gone through Blogger, hosted WordPress.com blog, self-hosted WordPress beforehand. Admittedly it's not for everyone, but it has massive advantages in terms of retaining control of your data over every other blogging platform I've tried. Because it just generates static HTML, you can host it pretty much anywhere you like (mine is on GitHub Pages). It's under version control, and you can easily store it on any machine with Git installed. With Octopress, this kind of thing will never be an issue because you can just push the files to somewhere else with ease.
If you're not using your own domain, take it as a free lesson in SEO: Use your own domain.
Capitalism was about companies to born and same companies to die when they can not anymore function or no one is buying their products/services.
Sorry but capitalism is brutal business and there is no time for emotions of family business dying because founded leaves it / dies.
And Venture Capitalist shoud be the ones what take the risk that the company whats stock they buy can never return anything back... Sorry but capitalism and stock market should be brutal business where no one comes to save you, especially government should never come to save any private corporation or bank... Capitalism is brutal business... You born and you die eventually.
The co-owner of 3dFiles (great site that allowed me to do pretty well on this app for Voodoo I/II/III -> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22APK+3dFx+Tuning+Engine%22&btnG=Submit&gbv=1&sei=kuAfUda_I5Og0gHX24CICw by hosting it for me there, which was GREAT & DIRECT "p.r.", going to the people that could actually use & GAIN by it... ).
I was living in Atlanta Ga. USA @ the time, & contacted the owner (saw his name, & remembered it from highschool in NY's why, & we had a common pal (who died, God rest his soul))... asked IF he could use an app like that, & I was JUST "starting out" in this field professionally, but doing that type of freeware on the side (helped on interviews in my early days is why).
He said "Sure, 'bring it on'" & it did well... well, so did his site, extremely so. So much so, ZDNet BOUGHT THEM OUT, but there's a "hidden ulterior motive" to these types of buyouts: What's that?
TO DESTROY COMPETITORS... point-blank!
They'll pay you in stock that MAY *tank* is why (which is what happened with 3dFiles... right around the time of the bubble-burst!). The guy I knew took a beating, had to drop a few things he bought (I might've done the same actually, thinking I was secure/safe).
I asked him though when I headed back into NY again after 6++ yrs. or so in the "dirty south" this question:
"DID THEY PAY YOU IN CA$H or STOCK?"
He said it was primarily stock (like 9/10ths iirc) on a 3++ million dollar deal he SPLIT with his FORMER partner (young crazy kid, but I liked him, & one of my co-workers knew him too, another coder)!
Anyhow/anyways - & he had a GOOD day job, as a DHL truck delivery guy, & iirc, #5 of 100's of them after a decade++ or more - I told him "DO NOT QUIT YOUR JOB!"
(Albeit, I did so, but without telling him my REAL reasons why - which is that "hidden ulterior motive" above I noted in caps... it's obvious actually, if you "channel your inner-criminal" & have worked with as many "business goofs" as I call them in the Fortune 100/500 over time building them apps in MIS/IS/IT is why - you figure out they are HUSTLERS (not in a good sense either)).
I figured they were going to 'sucker' him & *tried* to warn him politely... he quit his job (dumb, imo @ least, but... that's the way it goes, we all take a beating now & then + get 'cocky')... & when the stock tanked? The above "went down", & so did he.
I gotta hand him 1 thing though - he lived up to his words!
He told me he'd do it again, & BETTER, & yes:
HE DID MAKE A "COMEBACK" THOUGH - & told me he would. Majorgeeks is his now...
From what I have heard tell from mutual pals or just on the wire?
Doing well too.
I have to hand him that, he's a shrewd businessmen (even though he turned on me in the end, lol, like a typical business men does when you no longer serve enough purpose/offer enough utility & gain to them is all - I can accept that, but not after he ASKED myself & others to help out on his forums, which I did of my own free time, not asking a cent!).
We parted our ways... but the moral of this story?
BUYOUTS OF UP & COMING COMPETITORS MEANS THEY ARE AFRAID OF YOU, & FIGURING YOU'RE RELATIVELY "poor" BY WAY OF COMPARISON TO LARGE BUSINESS ENTITIES? They pay you peanuts, & do it to shut you down... ending a threat!
Didn't "RTFA", but I would almost BET that's what went down, here...
APK
P.S.=> That's life in the big city/fastlane, folks - get USED to it, if you EVER get in a situation like that yourselves (& nothing STOPS YOU, but you, on
But the original point was to ban the stock market, which enables takeovers. It is not sentimentality that wants to preserve family firms. Without company takeovers, everybody has to be fired, the machinery and premises converted to cash. Banning takeovers is the ultimate anti-capitalism: it bans cashing in your capital gains. It is feudalism: all companies must remain tiny and inefficient.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I have. They don't listen.
Of course the idea is only for thinking. Ain't gonna happen, as they say. There's a wide range of effect of buyout. Some good, some bad.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Twitter recently bought Crashlytics, a company making pretty good crash reporting tool and service for iOS and Android. The usual "nothing will change" and made it free for everyone. How long will that last, a year? My guess is, just like Posterous they will absorb whatever they can of their tech into internal tools and then shut it down. Otherwise, why would they make it free? It's disappointing when innovative tech companies like Crashlytics get swallowed and digested like this.
Can't be bothered to read their ToS and privacy policy, so simple question: does it report directly to you or is it reporting via Crashlytics servers?
Because if it's latter, it's probably only "free" in the sense that you're paying them with information they gather from reports from your apps, so they're less likely to just shut it down.
Well said, anonymous comrade.
Which brings us right back to why people are generally OK with not having to worry about hosting, DNS, and all the other stuff that goes into making a blog.
The crash reports -- like other services of its ilk -- are sent to and stored on Crashlytics' servers. The current TOS limit usage of reports by Crashlytics to providing the service to you and for service diagnostics. Of course, they change the TOS anytime they feel like it.
Just so they can shut it down?
Not quite:
Crashlytics does aggregate information across Developers in a non-personally identifiable way. Such aggregate and anonymous information is used by Crashlytics to (i) improve the Service, (ii) create analysis of trends or behaviors and (iii) other similar uses, but always in an aggregate and anonymous way.
Except as provided below in Section 3, we never divulge End User data in a personally identifiable, unique or non-aggregated manner to anyone other than the Developer
And also:
Developer hereby grants and agrees to grant to Crashlytics a royalty-free, fully paid up, non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide right and license to (a) use theDeveloper Data, solely for purposes of providing the Service to Developer (b) use the Developer Data to created aggregate measures of service usage and performance and (c) use the Results and aggregated Developer Data to improve the Service generally and for its other business purposes.
Developer agrees that Crashlytics is free to disclose aggregate measures of Service usage and performance, and to reuse all general knowledge, experience, know-how, works and technologies (including ideas, concepts, processes and techniques) related to the Results or acquired during provision of the Service (including without limitation, that which it could have acquired performing the same or similar services for another customer).
They also reserve the right to change the privacy policy at will
Here's a PRETTY GOOD "guess" -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3467321&cid=42923301 , albeit based on observation & experience...
* :)
(Nice part is, the guys that got bought out made some dough, hopefully NOT stocks (common-stock's b.s. anyhow, it's the "preferred" stuff that law covers you better on anyways)).
Plus - if you read that? I saw a guy I know (used to call him friend in fact, not anymore though) go thru it... he lived up to his word though & did it again (better, imo, in a way).
APK
P.S.=> That's 'business' & "life in the fast lane" for you...
... apk
So should startups that plan an exit strategy before having a solid idea much less an implementation.
If your goal is to sell out to a bigger company you have already failed as a technologist even if you sell for billions. Try thinking of a company that started out with the plan to sell out at some point and also produced something of real and lasting value.
+1 if I could good sir.
Actually I would rather see corporations have to give equal weight to supporting the people and environment in areas they operate with making profit.
That would stem the sociopath nature of corporations a great deal.
Corporations need a strong chain and a whip on their back in order for them to not destroy everything in their path.
What corporatism has brought us, besides millions of lemmings that worship them, is feudalism. Unless you are a high ranking executive in a corporation you are their serf.
Sorry the major downside IS cost.
Maybe not for the Slashdot readership where external hosts and Linux boxes with LAMP stacks are probably the norm, but we're not typical bloggers.
Typical bloggers a mindless teenagers who think someone else cares about what they think. Typical bloggers are aspiring journalists who want to demonstrate they have a history in writing. Typical blogs are written by anyone who has something to say and this does not require even the most basic of computer skills.
My sister falls into category B. She has quite a big blog covering politics but has trouble finding the powerbutton on her computer. If she needed to setup a blog on her own space it would cost her a fortune in consulting fees and she'd still be at the whim of some third party to maintain her website.
There was a time people did this themselves. Thank god Geocities was shut down.
So, see my subject-line, & yes - Perhaps you're correct: I can only offer what I've seen before's all, in a buyout situation with a successful website that truly "rocked the planet" in its day, circa 1997-2004 iirc...
* I don't waste time on "blogging" or these allegedly "real publishing systems" here -
Admittedly & however: I know VERY LITTLE about them as well (some on Twitter though)
I figure it this way, since I'm no 'expert' on them - IF even I know their name (as I do with "twitter"), like with major sports figures nowadays, which I have little interest in for decades now (& I was an NCAA 1st string lettering athlete in the mid to late 1980's in the sport of Lacrosse for a national champ)?
Then, they've got to be doing PRETTY WELL, @ least as far as popularity in the eyes of the general public!
(After all - They ARE the 'MAIN target' of anything online, or any business concern on it, they're essentially the "name of the game", including you & I, or anyone posting here too)...
Besides - The way I see it, I do FAR better things in the art & science of computing than 'blogging' !
Heck - I put up 1 small example of which was in my post I pointed you to in fact, circa 1996-2002!
That example actually did VERY well in that timeframe, & still shows up "like mad" in searches, even though I haven't developed it since 2002!
The site I noted that helped me out with it, by hosting it, was an 'example thereof' that got bought up, & shut down shortly afterwards as I stated, much as I suspect this was, is what my post was about!
(You asked, right? I answered with a SIMILAR example - I think it was you @ least who asked, I didn't check, & feel free to correct me there if you wish).
So, anyhow/anyways: There are many, Many, MANY more over time I did, & that's what I spend my time on!
(Many, that did as well or better & certainly were more "complex" work also on the freeware/shareware/commercially sold code market - & that's just what I did "on the side" of my "day job" as an MIS/IS/IT Info. Systems coder for a living (where the work was many orders of magnitude more complex & larger in size, as well as function that drives entire midsize to large companies in many areas)).
Thus/hence, my lack of interest in it... I was "Spread Out" pretty thin, & time was a factor, & I never "got into" twitter or the others you note's all!
(So, am I "missing out" on something? No, FAR from it... at least as far as I am concerned)
APK
P.S.=> What I find superior about technical forums such as this one? You can learn & GROW yourself, amongst people who sometimes are peers, or even superiors in the art & science of computing, & "interactively"...
Not sure if you can do that on "twitter" or the other examples you noted though!
... apk
the little worker bees who are too lazy to start their own businesses
Good troll, Sir.
Perhaps next time substitute "would lose their home as being unable to pay mortgage and bills" instead of "are too lazy" and you might hit the truth.
... because saying post-posterous is itself preposterous.
I... I'll just move it all to the cloud! YEAH!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The question we have to ask is whether we want to live in a state of constant brutality. If we wanted that, we could just have anarchy. It would be a lot cheaper.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"