Posterous is a blogging company for people who want to make small and simple blogs. It competes directly against Tumblr, but only in the same way that the Kansas City Royals compete directly against the New York Yankees. Anyway, Twitter just bought them. The amount was undisclosed and we hate to pry. The messaging from Posterous to blog owners is that the service will continue running as usual and that users will be informed if there are any changes. It also advises, “”For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.”
So those are pretty easy lines to read between: we’re shutting it down soon! This is being seen as more of a talent grab than a product grab by Twitter, those engineers and designers will be put to work building a stronger Twitter (quick user request: how about easy access to a back catalog of our own dang tweets?).
It’s also an indication that small blogging platforms are dangerous because the platform might die and your content would be lost or have to move. That unstable blogosphere works to the advantage of Twitter (and Facebook) because they are bigger, more stable companies.
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