Is Posterous the Blogging Platform of the Future?

While blogging has become increasingly easy for the average person as a result of social networking sites like Blogger, Xanga, and Facebook it's still probably not as easy as it could be for the average person--especially when it comes to posting rich media like audio clips, video posts, and photo galleries. What if blogging was as easy as sending an email...and you didn't even have to sign up for anything? That's Posterous.

Posterous is possibly the most dead-simple way for anyone to get started blogging. You simply send them an email (no signup required) and they post it for you on your own custom "yourname.posterous.com" website. Rich media you attach to your email is handled intellegently by the service. Attach a video, and Posterous converts it to a web-friendly flash format. Throw on some photos, and Posterous creates a slick photo gallery for your post automatically! Posterous even creates iTunes-friendly podcasts from audio files and provides simple download links for any documents you might attach. In my opinion, this approach is nothing short of revolutionary in terms of simplifying the the blogging process. For the casual user, it means they don't have to think about anything other than writing and supplying content; Posterous will make everything look good and work for the web.

There's more, and this is what really elevates Posterous to blogging platform excellence: it posts to multiple services as well as your main Posterous page. So if you submit a post with photos, Posterous can automatically add those to your Flickr account or Facebook profile, no problem! You can even have Posterous update your Twitter account each time you post as well. This drastically reduces the amount of cross-posting you have to do if you use multiple social networks or blogging platforms. Posterous can become your one-stop-shop for updating all your blogging and social network tools.

Right now, there's now way to customize exactly how your Posterous website looks, so it's difficult to use as a main site for serious bloggers, even though Posterous allows you to use a totally custom domain and track via Google Analytics. Due to the theming issue, Posterous is probably most suited (at this point) for casual bloggers that would like to be able to post once, and have it appear everywhere.

Although I won't be giving up my full Wordpress blogging solution anytime soon (I really like the control it affords me over my content, look, and ad placement) I have found a place for Posterous in my social networking landscape. Currently, it's my spot for everything that doesn't quite merit a full blog post, but is too big to put up on Twitter. It's great for posting mobile photos on the go from my T-Moble G1 to multiple services, and provides a simple way to update all my social networks when I may only have access to email.

The ease-of-use and convenience that Posterous provides is unprecedented for a blogging platform. While it may take a little while yet to grow into full maturity, I think Posterous could very well be the future of easy blogging on the Internet. Afterall, all you have to do is send an email!