Jon Mulholland -

Posterous starting to look like the new web 'hotness'

Speaking as an early adopter with a pretty good record (I reviewed FriendFeed well before Mr Scoble!) I think I have some credibility in saying that Posterous is starting to look like the next hot thing on the web.

On the surface Posterous offers the same or similar micro blogging / lifestreaming functionality as Tumblr – so why do I think it is gathering momentum? I think there are 4 big reasons:

Post blog entries by email – ridiculously easy to use and very mobile friendly The increased popularity of mo-blogging is definitely going make Posterous popular especially when combined with...

...autoposting to other popular social media hubs. Posterous can easily be set up to route posts and pictures to other online accounts, automatically sharing your updates with friends on Facebook and Twitter or even posting to another blog.

...autoposting of media files sent to your Posterous blog. Video and picture files emailed to your Posterous are automatically converted to professional looking galleries. No resizing, no file conversion – it just works and looks great.

...built in support for comments (including authentication support for Twitter & Facebook accounts) and Google Analytics. 

Posterous's blogging method may be lightweight, but the platform isn't.  These are big features that Tumblr doesn't have.

Steve Rubel posted yesterday that a new form of blogging is starting to emerge.  I think he's right, and I think that Posterous is well placed to play a big role.

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Location based social networks, which one will be the next, next big thing...

SXSW interactive has a knack for identifying ‘next big things’ in the technology world.  The Spring Break geek hangout is the ultimate crowdsourcing excercise; key trends and technologies tend to rise to the top in this tech hothouse.

Location based social networks have been rumbling around in the background for 18 months or so.  The rise of GPS enabled mass market consumer phones has driven these services towards a tipping point, and reports from Austin last week indicate that location based social networking will soon be ready for prime time.

There are already several contenders in this space, but which one will be the next, next big thing?

Brightkite is already quite a mature service, allowing users to check in, post notes and location tagged photos to followers.  It has a good iPhone App, and integrates nicely with other social networks including Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

Foursquare seems to have been the talk of SXSWi, describing itself as ” 50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game.”  It also has an iPhone App and supports check in by SMS.  Currently though only 12 city locations are supported - all of which are in the US.

Loopt is quite similar to Brightkite, in that it alerts users when friends are nearby and allows location tagged photos and comments to be shared.  Loopt provides a client application for both iPhone and Android users.

Only recently launched, Google Lattitude is the ‘elephant in the room’.  Surprisingly Lattitude currently doesn’t support the iPhone (although future support is promised) and at the moment only allows a users location and status to be shared.  The possibility of further integration with other Google services is very enticing though.

Will one of these be the next big thing in social networking, or are there other more promising contenders?

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