On the morning of March 13th, 2012 I learned that Twitter had purchased Posterous. It’s very big news in the world of microblogging and social media because Twitter is a powerhouse in social media and Posterous is a player in microblogging, a rival or Tumblr.
I mention the date of March, 13th 2012 because as a Posterous user, I received an email from them telling me of the acquisition by Twitter on March 19th. That’s six days. It doesn’t take six days to draft up an email. I think that the email should have been sent out within 72 hours of the news breaking.
With news traveling much faster because of things like Twitter in our now 6 hour news cycle, companies should try to get the world out to their consumers close to when they read that stuff on the internet. By close, I don’t mean before or even instantaneously after the announcement, but six days, in our current news culture seems like a very long time to me.
There is something else here. When Twitter purchased it’s most popular desktop client Tweetdeck, many users (I’m not one) and articles claim it ruined the service. Reading between the lines, one can only assume that Posterous could be heading for a similar fate. Which in turn has been a boon for Tumblr, Posterous’s rival as many users jump to move their content over to a platform they feel is more stable.
Only time will tell, what is to become of Posterous, but for me, I still wonder, Why did it take six days to draft such a simple message and send it out to your users? Six days in our internet society is just too long a period of time.
At the time of the announcement, I tweeted (I know the irony here) about the news and my opinion that twitter should leave the service alone. At that time, I didn’t know that six days would pass before I received that email announcement from Posterous… That’s just not good business in my book.