Twitter just announced that it has acquired Posterous, the Y Combinator-backed blogging and sharing platform that competed early on with Tumblr.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Posterous had raised $10.1 million in two venture rounds plus early seed funding from investors including Redpoint Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Jafco Ventures. I’d suspect it’s a similar outcome to what happened with Gowalla’s deal with Facebook, where talented employees find a soft landing at an acquirer with a shared mission. There were already some ties between the two companies. Chris Sacca, an early investor in Twitter, was also an advisor to Posterous.
Posterous says its service Spaces will stay up and running and that the company will give plenty of notice to users if they start to change the service.
An early competitor to Tumblr, Posterous was known for the savvy way it combined e-mail and other channels to allow users to post content from any type of web application. But it didn’t have quite the same traction as New York-based rival Tumblr and early founders like Garry Tan departed for greener pastures at places like Y Combinator, where he eventually became a partner. It evolved and late last year, the company released Spaces, a way to privately share photos with friends or family.
March 12, 2012 Posterous is Joining the Flock at Twitter
Big news: Posterous has been acquired by Twitter!
The opportunities in front of Twitter are exciting, and we couldn’t be happier about bringing our team’s expertise to a product that reaches hundreds of millions of users around the globe. Plus, the people at Twitter are genuinely nice folks who share our vision for making sharing simpler.Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.
You can find more information answers to other questions you may have here.
Finally, we’d like to offer thanks to all of our users, especially those who have been with Posterous since day one. The last four years have been an amazing journey. Your encouragement, praise and criticism have made us better. Thanks for that. We look forward to building great things for you over at Twitter.
And here’s Twitter’s statement:
Today we are welcoming a very talented group from Posterous to Twitter. This team has built an innovative product that makes sharing across the web and mobile devices simple—a goal we share. Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better.
Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.
We’re always looking for talented people who have the passion and personality to join Twitter. Acquisitions have given us people and technology that have enabled us to more quickly build a better Twitter for you.
Learn morePosterous emerged from Y Combinator in the summer of 2008 as an innovative company focused on making blogging simple - as simple as sending an email - and now has more than 15 million monthly users. With the launch of Posterous Spaces, the company is bringing its trademark simplicity to help people share smarter with intuitive privacy controls to share selectively across multiple platforms.
Posterous is my go to service for publishing to Social Media. Please Twitter don't disrupt this incredibly valuable and easy to use service.
The only improvement we really need is an easier way to remove spam comments.
