It is no secret that I was a big fan of Posterous, before Twitter bought it out and shuttered it. I wrote about it on this blog, and tweeted an endless litany of woes. Even now, every few weeks, I go to the Astronaut hanging out alone under the Posterous Spaces header, and shed a silent, unseen tear for a product I truly cared about. Unfortunately, I have been wary of start-ups ever since. Another start-up almost had me in a similar affair, although I did not get as deeply involved as I did with Posterous (think multiple blogs, custom CSS, domains, the whole show!). It was postach.io, the Evernote powered blogging site.
The Posterous Spaces Man
I was a power user of Evernote when I still had my iPhone, and a simple, no-frills blog, with no maintenance and running hassles, right out of my Evernote app was a major pull for me. But I had that apprehension about getting too invested in a start up, only to have my heart broken and my hopes dashed. I flirted awhile with the idea of an Evernote based blog and especially since I was snapping so many things together in the Evernote folders. However, I never did end up getting much into it, aside from blocking the Scepticemia name on the site.
Then, as I picked up using One Note, I started to use Evernote lesser and lesser. I heard whisperings of difficulties with Postach.io, but never really thought much about it as I was never much of a user anyway. Both Evernote and Postach.io had gone to the back of my mind and I never really thought much about it until a few days ago, when I, like 80,000 other Postach.io customers, received a note of apology from Gavin. It was really interesting to see a start-up owning up to the fact that it had let its users down and was apologetic for it. The bigger surprise was in my inbox earlier today: another heartfelt blog post from Gavin at Postach.io giving the August product updates, and walking us through the many difficulties a start-up app faces. It was refreshing to read such an honest admission on behalf of Gavin. It seems like the Postach.io team is getting things together and is gunning for the right goals and not just getting distracted by metrics to drive investments.
They have outlined a roadmap and the tone of the post is upbeat despite the gory details of the difficult history it relates. The team also seems to have put together a roadmap for the short term to deal with the biggest problems plaguing the platform:
Postach.io Roadmap: August Rush!
So will I be seduced into becoming a more active user on postach.io? Probably not, seeing that I am more of a One Note user now and the best use of Postach.io is when it is used through Evernote. I hardly use Evernote anymore, and in fact, I do not even have it installed on my current phone (a One Plus 2, which I thoroughly regret buying – I got caught up in the Android mania and the unique marketing trick of denying users instant gratification), and although I have it on my iPad, I do not use it. However, it is nice to see the start-up fighting back and not just selling out, which I am sure, was an option for them. Here’s hoping Postach.io does not go the Posterous way, but stays in business and keeps serving the people that have stuck with it through the difficult times.
Also, if anyone who matters is reading, please revive Posterous!