Posterous Spaces Acquired by Twitter

Posterous Spaces Logo

News is spreading rapidly that Twitter has acquired Posterous Spaces, a blogging site whose tagline is simply “Share Smarter”. Twitter has posted a blog post here, and Posterous has posted to its official blog as well.

A snippet from Twitter’s post:

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.

and from Posterous’ blog

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.

Both companies state up front that the services at Posterous spaces will not be interrupted and that, should any changes be made, everyone will be given plenty of notice. Posterous has also stated that they will soon be posting instructions on how to migrate your Posterous content elsewhere if you choose to do so.

So what are the implications of this acquisition? As I first thought about it, Twitter seemed to have been a fairly quiet company from what I remembered. Aside from acquiring TweetDeck, I couldn’t think of any other external activity like this. I did a quick search to see if there had been any other acquisitions, and I found this post at a blog called SEO by the Sea. Here is the list of acquisitions included in the post, see if you remember any of these guys:

  • July, 2008 - Summize
  • November, 2008 - Values of n
  • December, 2009 - Mixer Labs
  • April, 2010 - Atebits
  • April, 2010 - Cloudhopper
  • June, 2010 - Smallthought Systems
  • December, 2010 - Fluther

Bill Slawski, the author of SEO by the Sea, has a great recap of what Twitter actually acquired in each of these moves (people, technology, etc.), and it really looks like that’s what the acquisition of Posterous is all about. Based on the postings, it looks like in this case Twitter wants the people who created Posterous Spaces, not specifically Posterous itself. That said, will Twitter keep Posterous Spaces up and running indefinitely? Will the original developers still be involved? I guess it’s too soon to tell, really, but I’m interested to see what developments are on the way from this newly fortified Twitter team.

03/13/2012 - Update: Today I happened upon this article on FastCompany which delves more deeply into the reasons behind the acquisition. It’s definitely worth a read.

About Adam Platt

Adam Platt is a technologist with more than a decade of experience across the full stack. His passion for technology and penchant for rendering complex technical ideas into simple terms have made him an in-demand speaker. His resume includes BriForum, the PowerShell Summit, teaching engagements and more.

He is one of the 10 types of people who understand binary and he can solve a Rubik’s Cube.

About Adam Platt

Adam Platt is a technologist with more than a decade of experience across the full stack. His passion for technology and penchant for rendering complex technical ideas into simple terms have made him an in-demand speaker. His resume includes BriForum, the PowerShell Summit, teaching engagements and more.

He is one of the 10 types of people who understand binary and he can solve a Rubik’s Cube.