Social Media Platforms – Change is Inevitable!

In early 2000’s, the craze of Blogging and self publishing opened the world to a huge potential of social connections and sharing of community and experiences.  Later, MySpace took over the Social Media scene with an absolute tidal rush of growth in the mid 2000’s.  After MySpace came Facebook with improved user experience and functionality, but unfortunately it seems like almost TOO MUCH functionality.  The next big thing was Twitter, taking things in the opposite direction.  Simplicity to the point of near-extreme limitations.

Among the tech news and social media buffs has been the buzz of wonder, asking what would be the next “big thing” to fill a gap in the world of Social Media and Networking space.  The downfall to all of the above mentioned platforms is that they either allow too much flexibility to the point of confusion, or too little to the point of near uselessness.  Not to say that Twitter is necessarily useless, or Facebook is overly confusing… but for some it may be.

This is where Posterous seems to fit nicely amidst an ever-growing ethos of Social Media platforms that hope to be the be-all end-all service for your future social media endeavors.  Not only is the service very simple to navigate, network, and socialize. Posterous most importantly makes it very simple to post content without limitations as well as share that content among all the other networks without their limitations.  I think this is the sweet spot where most other networks have fallen a bit short.

To give you an example. I started a blog where I wanted to post information about technology, gadgets, social media, web developments, and other typical context of geekery.  I have a full time job, and do a lot of other things that keep me busy.  I am by no means a professional writer, nor do I want to be!  I only wish to express things I have discovered with slight detail, or explanation without having to write a 20 page report on a subject.  As my blog grew in popularity, posts were usually long-winded and sometimes more than they needed to be. Then came Twitter which really slowed down my blogging momentum, because of it’s ability to post those same thoughts that would have been blog posts, into short micro posts!  ”Great!  A Time Saver!”  At first it seems great, but over time you begin to realize that 140 characters just doesn’t cut it when you have a little more to say about a subject.  On the contrary, sometimes it seems like blogs are almost expected to express newspaper article sized posts.

With previous platforms, you are left in limbo of whether you should make your thoughts truncate into 140 characters, or take the risk of skimping on detail within a blog post with high expectations of detail among your subscribers.  THAT is where Posterous will find its sweet spot niche for me!

Sofar I am impressed of what I am seeing of Posterous.  Hopefully it will not evolve into another over-featured stuffed duck.  I’ll be the first to kick it to the curb along with the Twitter Bird!

Now if I could just figure out the correct pronunciation for “Posterous”!

* Ohh yeah!  I guess it is appropriate to mention that this post was originally written in email and posted via Posterous!