Tiny Annoyance in Posterous

Yes, you're wrong. ;)

I don't disagree with you. While it should be made easier for those who only want to do one certain thing, it certainly shouldn't be 'dumbed down' for those who can do more. The opportunity should be there. And maybe spur those who do that one certain thing to learn to do more.

Hi Chris,

I've been using Posterous, too. So far I love it.

From the Posterous FAQ regarding video embeds:

*************************
We turn any URLs into links. But we try to do smarter things when we can.

If you paste a YouTube link, like this video of Kansas playing Carry On Wayward Son:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB17uWuBrL0

We automatically turn it into a YouTube embeded player for your new post:

We currently automatically embed players for the following sites: YouTube, Google Video, Hulu, Funny Or Die, Omnisio, MixWit, Justin.TV, Fliggo, Vimeo, motionbox, TED Talks, Viddler, Dailymotion, Blip.tv, Revver, TeacherTube, GodTube, seesmic, and Brightcove.

If you'd like more sites added, let us know.
**************************

So, if you haven't already, just try emailing the YouTube link to Posterous, and they'll take care of the rest.

Cheers

It's only annoying because they solved video, but what other embeds have they missed?

Good point. However, with a team of 2 that I think just expanded to a team of 4, I'll try to be patient as they roll out more functionality and integrations.

Hope you're enjoying your vacation.

I've been hearing quite a bit about Posterous lately but haven't tried it yet. I must admit, this does put me off a bit. Seems like a basic thing.

It just means I can't be a power user. Perfect for the less techie. Otherwise, good app.

I saw this a couple months back in a magazine and looked at it briefly. It didn't seem to have much appeal to me so I didn't even give it a try.

Afraid I disagree with you on this one (for once!)

The fact that Posterous will take an emailed Youtube url and auto-embed the video is one of the main selling points for me - and the ease of use is the main selling point over Tumblr in particular.

If I want to be able to get into playing with an embed code (which despite being very simple, is beyond a lot of normal internet users), I've got Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, and possibly Tumblr (haven't checked), plus many, many more.

Twitter is probably the most 'dumbed down' service at the moment, and yet is incredibly popular and useful.

Facebook is more 'dumbed down' than Myspace, and is succesful because of it (Michael Leis did a good post about how the look and feel of Myspace destroys it).

You're right. The more I think about it, the more I'm just not using it right.

lol...in all honesty, I have the same reaction to a lot of services, until I force myself to remember that although I'm not particularly technical, and don't consider myself an expert, I'm still beyond what would be considered mainstream.

In my case, I see Posterous as an easy way to share things that make me laugh etc, without posting them to my main blog - in the same way as I might use Stumbleupon to highlight random things around the web.

I'm really enjoying Posterous so far, perhaps because I've never felt the urge to "muscle down" in any way. Then again, I only use it avocationally.

Chris, I'm not understanding what you mean, I clicked HTML and pasted the embed from YouTube in this post about the Beatles: http://tr.im/iz0J

@Chris I email in the embed link as an iFrame and it works great (they recently added iframe support). Also, I send the YouTube link directly as someone suggests below.

Hi Chris.

I tried enbedding a YouTube video on Posterous nad had no problem.

Swith to HTML editing. Paste in the YouTube embed code. Save.

http://stevegarfield.posterous.com/ireland-bask...

Works for me.

Try it again.

Dammit. I'd hate if it was just a random bad copy/paste. : (

Like others mentioned, the company is a startup and they're understaffed. Give them time, they'll get better.

On a different note, I'm surprised you just discovered Posterous when I started using it 9 months ago after seeing some tweets from Guy Kawasaki. Hadn't you seen his at the same time? http://ariwriter.com/posterous-between-twitter-...

we're not understaffed, we're just lean and efficient :)

Chris, we'd love to find out exactly what you did and what we should do on our end to fix this. Let me go through how you can embed on our site:

1. Email in a youtube url. we make it an embed
2. Insert a youtube url into a post on the web editor, we expand it
3. Email us the full embed code. We'll maintain the embed code and it just works
4. Use the bookmarklet
5. Switch to html view in the editor and paste in embed code

Please let us know if you're still having trouble, and email us anytime, help@posterous.com and we'll respond quickly.

Thanks

I had sim probs. I posted one of my 12seconds videos on Posterous and apparently some of the Mozilla plugins prevent people from viewing the video. I also tried a manual insertion of a personal video and it appeared to have wiped out some previous posts, but the system righted itself and all was well with the world. Did any of that make sense? :)

Nice post ..keep writing such great posts.

hey Chris ... love the SFC post ... nice, nice, nice ... and i agree ... its all about giving, sharing, putting it out there for others ...

so, this Posterous issue ... you know? i've been using Posterous for a bit now too ... i'm not as bloggerific as you tend to be, but when i see something + want to push it out to share ( or when i want to articulate + share my thoughts ), lately i've been jumping into Posterous ...

there are some awkward areas in the experience ... not everything is up front + obvious ... there is a bit more learning needed than i am accustomed to with my daily social webbings ...

here's a for instance

you want to add some photos, maybe a dozen or so, to your Posterous ... i was hunting all around the ui without even an iota of understanding about was going on ... + then, not sure how, but i bumped across the idea that you're supposed to 'post' to your Posterous using an email ... not sure why i didn't get this from day 1 during the smooth sign up flow ... that the 'post' in Posterous is a reference to the analog notion of sending mail, postage, what have you ... i set up my Mac account email on Posterous and could then select a nice batch of work from iPhoto + upload rather easily ... once i found 'the way' ( the Posterous way ), it was SO easy ... + i got that nice little thumbnail to detail Ajaxy control above the current photo in the photoGallery

i didn't try video yet ... no personal video + nothing from YouTube ... but i can imagine a consistent awkwardness to the site ... just sort of spotty areas where the interaction is inconsistent or doesn't meet the user expectations ...

i still love i + i am using it for capturing research + thoughts on my gradSchool work

Haven't tried this, but posterous is awesome, so easy and fun.

Great article! I Really like it so much.I think the others will also like this post.I would like to say thanks for making such a cool article.Thanks for sharing.I have book marked it for future use.

Posterous seems a little schizophrenic to me. On one hand, it want to be the mechanism to update your blog, not be your blog. On the other hand, an autopost to Twitter would link to posterous and not, say, your Wordpress or Blogger site??

Posterous isn't schizophrenic. We want to *be* your blog :)