[tweetmeme source=”Ileane”]I recently created another blog on Posterous but I wasn’t really sure why I would need it. To fill you in on what Posterous is, the tagline from the homepage: “is the dead simple place to post everything. just email us.” And after all, my tagline and the purpose of this blog states:
I’m here to learn, to teach and to connect!
Therefore, I consider adding another blogging platform to my social media arsenal, as a golden opportunity to share the experience with my readers.
Why use Posterous?
I like the clean look and feel of the template I’m using on Posterous. I find it a very easy alternative to the seemingly endless stream of widgets and themes found on WordPress.com. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the the multitude of features here, it’s just that there are times when I want sharing to be less complicated. Using Posterous I compose entire posts in an email, send it off and I’m done.
What is Lifestreaming?
I did some searches for Posterous and found this article by Mark Krynsky at his lifestreamblog, My Thoughts on Posterous as a Lifestreaming Platform. He uses this graphic to compare Lifestreaming with Posterous.
Lifestreaming or Posterous
Mark does an excellent job of describing both concepts and illustrating how they are different with this graphic. Lifestreaming sounds like such a cool thing to do, how can any social media addict like myself (and you of course) resist. On the other hand, Mark concludes that although Posterous bloggers have recently added some very intriguing content well worth exploring, Posterous remains on the opposite end of the Lifestream funnel.
It simply feeds into your Lifestream just like Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Diigo, YouTube and all of your other social outlets.
Some alternatives that more closely match the definition of Lifestreaming are Tumblr, MyBlogLog and FriendFeed.
Additional insights on Posterous can be found in this post from David Breshears Posterous in the Lifestream.
Why do I need a Lifestream?
I like the logic found on this excerpt taken from Dana Lookadoo
Your online social network sharing is your lifestream, your vapor trail. I’m happy to share my trail, knowing it will be indexed in search engines. Actually, I’m counting on it!
Lifestream – Sharing Your Online Activity.
It reminds me of Biz Markie’s rap song “ The Vapors“. You can catch my vapors on FriendFeed for now.
Leave your comments and let me know if you have created a vapor trail (or lifestream) and where to find it.
Smooches!
UPDATE: A related post with a list of lifestreaming resources can be found on Haleybradshaw’s blog
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ms. ileane speaks 
Does Postereous send to Blogger – is that a part of “other social outlets”….this is interesting.
Would you consider this to be the KISS method for blogging?
Good piece, informative.
Thanks for the kudos.
Yes, you can autopost from Postereous to blogger. See the list of services you can autopost to here: http://posterous.com/autopost
It is indeed the KISS method. Let me know where I can catch your vapors!
Interesting concept, and it seems new words are being coined every day to keep up with social networking technology. I got a huge vapor trail – twitter to facebook to goodreads to yahoo groups to amazon – my blog syndicates to probably a dozen sites I have and they all drive traffic to each other. Pretty cool. But this posterous thingy sounds really interesting. I’ll check it out.
Marvin D Wilson
Old Silly,
Hey, thanks for the comment. I know, it’s hard to keep up with all your vapors. LOL! Do you use FriendFeed?
Friendfeed? No – new one on me … I’ll have to check it out – one simply cannot have too large of a vapor trail!
The Old Silly
Ms. Ileane, thank you for sharing my Lifestream and my own little perspective. It’s amazing how our Lifestreams are each unique canvases upon which we are painting with each social media post, tweet, bookmark, vote.
I have intended for month now to test out Posterous as a feed. You motivated me to learn more, and I’m excited to learn of you and how you are sharing your social media journey.
Question, your http://msileanespeaks.posterous.com/ account has “msileanespeaks” at the beginning. Posterous says they assign the blog name based on the 1st email posted. Is “msileanespeaks” the user name of the email you used to first post there (msileanespeaks@#####.com) or the identity “from” attribute of the email?
Appreciate your insight!
Thanks again and nice to meet you!
Hi Dana,
Nice to meet you too and I’m so glad you stopped by.
I’m not 100% sure about the steps I took to get my choice of user name on Postereous. I do remember that I signed up and the account and it just sat there for a couple of weeks before I posted anything. I didn’t use email for the first post I added since it was actually a re-post from my blogger (I know, I know – I have way to many blogs). Bottom line is that I suspect I picked (or changed) the name when I established the account.
I hope we can talk again soon. Thanks.
You are light years ahead of me with social media. I have to catch up. Very interesting post. I will have to read up on it a bit more. Happy to see you are Social Media butterfly.
See you soon
Nice to see you here old friend. Anytime you have questions just let me know. Thanks so much for the “butterfly” comment!
Very interesting and amusing subject. I read with great pleasure.
this is great. i might take a second look at posterous
Logan, thanks for stopping by. Glad you liked the post.
Excellent post, Ileane. I signed up for a Posterous account sometime last year, but haven’t done much about it. I should probably have another look. After all, we are all learning, aren’t we? Best regards.
Hi Romy C. Thanks for stopping by. I’m glad you enjoyed the post. Let me know how to find you on Posterous so that I can subscribe. Chat with you soon.
Looks interesting…I wonder how do you manage to keep up with such a large number of sites…
Gouri, I know, I spend way too much time on the internet, but I’m having fun. lol
Thanks for stopping by.
Great blog!!! I feel so inferior. I’ve subscribed to the feed. Great stuff!
Cool. Glad you enjoyed your visit here. Thank you.
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You say: it’s just that there are times when I want sharing to be less complicated.
I Say: try using quickpress from within wordpress. You should also try having your own wordpress blog, not the self hosted one. Posterous is pointless, my content on their site so that I send them more people which in turn grows their traffic?
Zahid,
Thanks for your input. There is only one problem, I did not set up my access to quick press yet and besides on my WordPress blog I like to use all of the formatting tools (like more tags, headings, etc). I don’t think you can access the “kitchen sink” from quickpress (see http://wp.me/pAvrk-8Y).
I don’t have a self-hosted blog, but I think you meant to say just the opposite. FYI – I like free stuff!!
Even though you don’t like Posterous, please feel free to visit my blog there, I have some good post there that you might like.
Thanks for stopping by!
Found your blog through Mitchell Allen and I am subscribing. Thanks for the link to lifestreaming resources.
Hi Sharon,
Great to meet you. I’m on your site now, thinking “What a great idea!”
I followed you back on Twitter also.
Mitch is such an amazing guy. I am honored that he added me to his list of Linkable Ladies http://su.pr/2xmi3n#.
See you in Twitterville!
I like this article. And the graphic is terrific. Gives the correct picture of what Posterous is all about 🙂
Hi, thanks for visiting my blog. The credit for the graphic goes to Mark Krynsky, I’m just glad I was able to find it. Please visit again soon.
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I found your blog through blog engage several days ago. – Great posts!
I would have to agree with you that Posterous is a good tool to add to the social media tool box. For a couple of months I have been throwing around the idea of starting a new blog but not wanting to spend a lot of time setting up wordpress or messing with blogger. When I came across Posterous, I was sold because of all the features for posting to every site I use at once, I also like the simple design.
I find that this is good for the new blogger or someone who is a causal blogger not needing anything special. Plus there things that it cant do or does things that I do not like, that a user SHOULD have control of. Such as having option to turn some of the autofeed sites off w/o having to remove the site from your lists. As for the email to post works ok, not the best but if you cant use the web editor (horriable) then it works great. Maybe in the future it will have more features.
Until I get my wordpress and theme setup I will be using posterous for a while.
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With so many terminologies describing so many online analogs to our real world activies, I’d hesitate to answer in the affirmative.
I actually first heard of lifestreaming in the context of a personal history of documentation. I just checked WikiPedia for a frame of reference. the entry there confirms that:
As such, I never gave the term a second thought. Now that social media have adopted the word and expanded the definition, perhaps it is safe to say that I am a Lifestreamer by default. I make only a rudimentary effort to coordinate my online presence. This is accomplished with a personal website that aggregates my profiles. In addition, some of these profiles permit me to list other profiles, so there is some overlap (retaggr.com, Google profiles and FrontPorchFolks).
Posterous seems a likely candidate for my own arsenal if, like Feedly, it helps me simplify what I do frequently on the web.
For example, you may remember that I use Jing and its screencast. You showed my that Posterous can be just as simple for sharing annotated screenshots. Yet, I also use Jing to create screenshots for documentation. So, the main functions of two activities are handled by one app.
Once I look more into Posterous, particularly the idea of emailing to post – which is something I always thought was cool (WordPress stuff 🙂 ) – I may add it to my toolbag.
Cheers,
Mitch
Mitch, my lifestream isn’t organized in one place like it should be. Just to clarify, now that I’m using chrome, most of the time I make use of the Awesome Screenshot or Aviary extension to capture screenshots and then email them to Posterous. Awesome screenshot appears to be the best at doing that so far and there’s no watermark (like Aviary) or header area (like Jing) to deal with.
Posterous does have a bookmarklet that comes in handy at times, but often it grabs sidebars or ads from the page that I don’t want.
Much more sophisticated tools for lifestreaming have been introduced, but I haven’t had the time to explore them.
Now that you’re using Chrome, you might want to give Awesome screenshot a try, I think you’ll find it more flexible than Jing.
Thanks for the conversation. I’ll see you on BloggerLuv.com later today I’m sure.
Ileane,
I was tempted to check out Awesome screenshot, as I was just on the extensions page the other day looking for StumbleUpon.
Inertia and time management had kept me from looking at it, but I think I’ll give it a go, since you made good points about the Jing branding (I would have to upgrade to a paid service with TechSmith to remove that…)
Cheers,
Mitch
Mitch, with Awesome screenshot extension you get 2 options, capture visible part of page or capture entire page. You can mark-up or add text if you want, but most of the time I just save the file, use the email options right on the interface, next I email Posterous – done. It’s like having a screenshot “Easy” button.
Ileane,
Now that I’ve had a chance to play with Awesome Screenshot, I see exactly how it makes Posterous a snap for you.
Thanks again for sharing!
Cheers,
Mitch
Very informative. You have done all the leg work for us, collating very relevant and bright information. I want to try using posterous because posting from an android email account, to several services sounds just about right to me.
Hi Tanclo, if you are looking to save some time by auto-posting Posterous is the way to go. Thanks for your comment.
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I’ll definitely have to look into this. Thank you!
Hi Ileane,
It’s hard to believe, but I finally did what I said I would do back on July 13, 2010.
I am now using Posterous because of the email capability! You were asking me about this on Twitter, so I figure I would demonstrate.
Cheers,
Mitch
Hey Mitch, I love when you do Web 2.0 experiments!
Hi Ileane, I’m glad you like these, as you’re quickly becoming the de facto lab assistant! I discovered some contaminants in the filtration device which may have absorbed the pure essence from being forwarded. 🙂
I’ve scrubbed them out and am retesting now.
If you reply to this comment, hopefully, it will work.
Cheers,
Mitch
Testing 1, 2, 3