This is a good example of what copywriting does in the web. The interesting part is that even though the first page says that the site is temporary, in actual fact it's not. It is a complete portfolio. It has everything a CCO needs to know about a hire. It illustrates the author's personality, and as it happens illustrates how commentors here don't get sense appeals. The comment quality and popularity of this submission is so disjointed.
If I am to write a title for this HN submission it'd be:
Not exactly apple to orange, but more Facebook to LinkedIn?
A social network's content is its people. I think Tumblr did well targeting the casual crowd. Posterous blogs that I come across, on the other hand, are very "merit-arian," so to speak. Lots of industry focused minds on there that is famous not because of Posterous, but because they are also high in some other circle. In this case, Posterous is only providing them with the tools, with a small Posterous ad attached.
I wouldn't want to see them sacrificing that just to beat Tumblr.
I think the point is that the article itself is not making sense, not the news it is trying to report.
When I read the article I also thought about just normal browsing page load times. That is already so fast that a 60x increase is hardly noticeable. That just makes the news trivial and the chromium team look like freakish geeks with nothing better to do than crunching numbers that only a machine can read.
That is until I looked at the demo video, which I missed on the article and only found about here. I can see that, particularly with that photo wall and the painter thing, snappiness is what would make them work.
I guess you could argue erotica isn't porn, but yes, they like it. The notion actually extends beyond sexually explicit material, as many popular tumblelogs in the directory has porn or something that alludes to porn in their title even though they have nothing to do with sex.
porn has always been a great early indicator on the web, and the fact that blogger porn sites have exploded on Tumblr indicates that is usability, and social features are superior.
I'm a big fan of Posterous but the social edge on Tumblr means more traffic and exposure for the blog which what attracts and keeps people on the platform.
They do not advertise that feature as much though, and by using email, wouldn't you miss out on at least some of their main social networking selling point?
A lot of what makes them popular can only be found on their site. You don't get any engineering vibe from them, they project a very sensitive image that appeals to the heart. By not visiting their site, you are not participating.
I think the posterous offering is not diluted by email posting, and it would at least appear to me to make more sense if more people on posterous use email posting.
I can only speak for myself. I personally user tumblr (only started few months ago) for private ramblings about random stuff that comes in my mind. My tumblr is blocked from search engine and I have not shared the link with anyone. I also blocked out comments and whatever other social media features there might be. I would have made it password protected if they allowed private tumblers to have access to API (you can't post to password protected pages from desktop publishing software AFAIK).
I know this is not how or why most people use tumblr. But thats ok. I use it only the way I like it.
I also have a "public" self hosted wordpress blog which I share with my friends and family and open to search engine.
posterous, to me, is just yet another blogging platform. Just like I don't feel like I need to try out every single new things comes out every week, I don't feel like posterous really sets them apart is such a way from all other existing blogging platform for me to even bother.
Of course Posterous is just another blogging platform. Have they tried to be anything else? The way you described how you use tumblr does seem to suggest that Posterous is actually a better fit, but it appears that you just found tumblr first and didn't bother to switch.
The Posterous switch campaign awhile back was targeted at users like you. That's how they were trying to set themselves apart. It might not have worked well, but the intention is clear.
There is only so much a utility product can do to diversify itself from competitors. A condom is a condom is a condom. As long as it doesn't leak, it works. Would you complain that Trojan's products are not sufficiently different from Durex?
If I were to take your analogy seriously than it would right to argue that all operating systems are just OS, it makes no difference whether you use windows, OSX, Linux, BSD, solaris.
The reason yor analogy doesn't work is because condoms are single purpose, blogging software and OS are not. They can be and has been able to set them apart from one another with features, implementations, ease of use and services.
This ignores quality, convenience, and the user experience. Not all condoms are the same, and how they are deployed by the user makes all the difference in the world.
Is it just me but isn't it a bit too early to say Twitter is trying to wall itself in? Are they taking down the APIs?
From what I can see here they just want Twitter.com to be a viable (and profitable) business. Why wouldn't anyone want that? In fact, I think it's about time Twitter finally stepped up to define just what kind of a service Twitter really is about. If anything it would be a nice stepping stone to introduce to people who don't yet get it's structure to try it out.
Yes, there are third-party developers who have created their own platforms and in a sense helped define the medium. There are many such choices, but really many of the functions they provide overlap. Do we really need that many different Twitter clients with minute differences? If Twitter were to provide the basic functions itself, then I'd say that this is a good time for third-party developers to think up new ways to diversify themselves. Wasn't there just not so long ago someone posted a HTML5 tower defense game up here that has a Twitter scoreboard? Why not expand on that?
Yap. Especially in the case of Groupon, many of their articles read like poetry--very daring imagery and voice. They are doing as much service to the people who subscribe to their emails as to the brands who have the honor to get the Groupon face-lift.
It is a very refreshing model compared to most other startups where as far as I can see, paid no attention to copywriting.
Woot would be another example of a startup with great copy. I buy something like 0.5-1% of all Woots that I see - but I keep checking them because at least 20% of the descriptions make me "lol".
It is not just the copy, it is the whole direct selling layout. They know the tricks and the methods. Benefits, big buttons, ask for the order etc. Good job.
yes! but for now we are focusing on personal and private relationships. user and interest based discovery is something we are definitely going to add in...
I actually somewhat empathize with lotus's view that Gmail should just be Email and that's it. I think it is bad UX if people who just want email and not these confusing new "social" business have their software change in their face with disruptive noises.
I think Google is moving in the right direction when they introduced that account page / dashboard thing that acts as a hub for Google services. Unfortunately there isn't much besides just the list there for now. What I'd hope is for Google Me to expand on this idea and actually show people how they are related to the data Google has about them, and more importantly, what they can do with it.
Look at what they did with iGoogle. I don't like its loss of simplicity, but it would be a much better 'control center' for all these various offerings...
Not a journalistic investigation, but a while back I decided that I need a new gmail account. I signed it up using some different credentials, including a different name. However, I did not mention my old gmail account in the entire sign-up process. After I activated my new account, I got an email on my old account referencing the new address I just signed up for and a verification code "in case something happens."
From this it seems to me like this is not a deliberate maneuver to deceive, but rather just an oversight.
I have a second gmail account (in the olden days that's what they recommended on http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/publish.html - I see now that they have switched to using filters), and this didn't happen to me.
Are you sure you didn't use the first gmail account to send an invitation? Because in that case it does add the address to both accounts address books.
If I am to write a title for this HN submission it'd be:
A CV of a text designer.