Microblogging: Tumblr vs. Posterous

Microblogging is defined by Wikipedia as:

Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web.

The content of a micro-blog differs from a traditional blog in that it is typically smaller in actual size and aggregate file size. A single entry could consist of a single sentence or fragment or an image or a brief, ten second video. But, still, its purpose is similar to that of a traditional blog. Users micro-blog about particular topics that can range from the simple, such as "what one is doing at a given moment," to the thematic, such as "sports cars," to business topics, such as particular products. Many micro-blogs provide short commentary on a person-to-person level, share news about a company's products and services, or provide logs of the events of one's life.

The two most prominent systems in this field maybe are Tumblr and Posterous. I have tried both systems and each have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Customizability

Update: Custom themes already comes to Posterous. More details in here.

Tumblr definitely wins in this aspect. You can install pre-made themes and templates into your tumblr blog or you can make your own. Moreover, you can add scripts just like google adsense, mybloglog, google analytics into your tumblr blog.

This is the main limitations with posterous. I once noted that this is one feature they were supposed to offer in the future, but revisiting their FAQ--it's not there anymore (their plan to offer the ability to change your theme).

Favicon-wise, you can change in at your tumblr blog but not in posterous. You always have to deal with that regular posterous icon as your favicon.

Think about it, your blog at posterous looks like any other blog around hosted by posterous as well. How do you like that?

Commenting System

Currently, tumblr does not have a built-in commenting system, while posterous have one. I can't speak about the effectiveness of the anti-spam of the latter as I don't really have a popular blog in there that can be able to solicit a lot of spams.

However, you can always install Disqus into your Tumblr blog and instantly you have a working commenting system. It has also been tested against spam as many popular blogs are utilizing the same in their popular blogs.

Ease of Posting

Both services offer posting by email. (Unfortunately, both also don't know how to insert line breaks, if there are any in my original email, to post to my blog). But Posterous handles photos better especially when you have attached more than one photo. It auto arranges them into a gallery-like post that really look nice.

Both services also have a bookmarklet, but I liked Tumblr's even better. It's quicker and more responsive. It allows you to classify your post on the fly as to whether it's a video, photo, audio, text, quote or link.

Custom Domains

Both offer custom domains. However, I believe Tumblr handles redirection very well than Posterous. If you have a top level domain name (e.g., domain.com), any request for www.domain.com are duly redirected to domain.com in tumblr, while in Posterous your blog is accessible at both www.domain.com and domain.com. This makes it anti-SEO as Google and other search engines think you have duplicate contents both at your main domain at domain.com and at a subdomain www.domain.com.

Storage Space

Posterous explicitly states in the FAQ that you are limited to 1GB of upload space for all types of media files (including documents). In Tumblr there's no such provision. You decide.

Facebook Integration

Both have an available third party app (I don't know with posterous maybe it's not 3rd party) that can enable you to autopost your blog posts to facebook.

Others

I can't think of anything anymore. But I'll update this post once I encounter any other differences (or even similarities) worth mentioning. If you know of one, please feel free to post your comment below.

Conclusion

Hands down, my vote goes to Tumblr. The most selling point for me is the customizability and the custom domains feature.

Check out my tumblr blog here.

What about you, which microblogging platform do you prefer (aside of course for twitter, as twitter is definitely not in the same league as these two, much less is wordpress)?

Update: I discussed more about domain mapping here.

Some WordPress Related Articles

Facebook Connect Wordpress Plugin

This plugin lets you, the blogger, to integrate a Facebook login in your WordPress commenting system. Why would you want to do that? We bloggers usually want to build a community around our blog or website. What better way to build that community but by your friends in Facebook.

Your friends, and any other commenters for that matter, can use their Facebook credentials to login and comment at your blog. Their author url points to their Facebook profile.

In this blog, which is using Disqus commenting system, you can also comment using your facebook credentials. This is made possible by the built-in Facebook integration within Disqus.

If you are using Disqus as well and would like to integrate Facebook upon it, just go to their services and you'll find a tutorial on how to do it. You will need your own Facebook account to do this.

How to move WordPressMU

By moving it means moving from one domain name to another. This involves a lot of MySQL hacking. If you're really not comfortable with that, better not try.

But you can always try of course, but be sure to backup your database first.

Importing a single WP blog to a WPMu Installation

This is applicable if you want to convert your standard WordPress blog to a WPMu install. Why would you want to do that? This offers a lot more flexibility if you want to install various blogs for various topics that you want to blog about. This will maintain a single login credentials for various blogs in different subdomains of your main blog.

MySQL server has gone away on line: 124

If you are on WordPress, this is one error that's truly irritating. I'm not sure to which do I attribute this attitude, to which plugin is resulting to this error.

I'm not even sure if this is caused by the MySQL server per se in my shared hosting account in my webhost.

If anyone knows a solution about this, I would be glad if you can leave a comment here to help me out. If it's the webhost, I think I need to migrate already.

What about you, do you as well experience the same error?

Online Banking with BPI Express Online

I don't have this kind of problem with Metrobank, PNB, Banco De Oro/Equitable PCI Bank as regards online banking is concerned.

But the BPI online banking site appears to be always offline, or inaccessible, or whatever crap!



If only our payroll account is not with them, I would have no second thought, I'll happily transfer my transactions to another bank.

How to Install Truecrypt in Ubuntu 9.04

Truecrypt is probably the best way to encrypt your private data. It's cross platform, in Windows, Mac and Linux. In Linux I've installed it successfully in Ubuntu and Debian.

TrueCrypt is a proprietary (although its source code is available) software application used for real-time on-the-fly encryption. It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or a device-hosted encrypted volume on either an individual partition or an entire storage device. It supports Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (using FUSE) and encrypted volumes can be made portable. The version for Windows Vista or XP can encrypt the boot partition or entire boot drive and has the ability to create and run a hidden encrypted operating system whose existence is deniable.

In Ubuntu especially, it's the easiest to install as compared to other Linux distro's. You just have to download the deb file from the download page. Extract it in your computer and just double-click or run the .deb file.

And voila, you have a running truecrypt. Congratulations!

Convert Videos to FLV and Display them in WordPress

Why would you want to convert your video files to flv?

That's because so that you can make it play in any WordPress installation you have, or maybe even in any webpage for that matter. I may not apply to all video formats but flv files are generally smaller in size with the same video quality as compared to when they are in any other different format. Youtube and other video sharing sites convert any video file to flv first before posting.

Convert Video Files to FLV

We are only talking about free software here. So far the best "free" video conversion utility for Windows I found was the SUPER, which stands for Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer. Their website is found here.

I found the software through search which landed me to this forum and downloaded the software from here. I followed the tutorial on the forum.

So far I was able to successfully convert .3gp and .mp4 files.

Posting the Video to your WordPress blog

You will need the wp-flv plugin to display an flv video into your WordPress blog. The plugin is not anywhere in the plugins repository so you will need to download it from the official plugin homepage.

However, it is not anymore actively supported by the plugin author, and I'm quite worried that anytime it'll go down.

I compiled myself the necessary files in order to successfully run the WordPress plugin into your own installation (for eternity purposes). It's in 7z format, so you'll need to have 7-zip installed.

File includes:
- wp-flv-readme.html
- wp-flv.php
- mediaplayer.swf

Good luck in your dealing with this plugin.

Download WP-FLV

Just Another WordPress vs. Blogger Blog

I'm starting to get serious with this blogger/blogspot blog of mine, and I want to tell you why.

WordPress.com vs. Blogger

For me, blogger/blogspot wins for customizability. I mean, you can customize blogger easily and you can run your own ads, unlike in wordpress.com wherein it's wordpress.com's ads that are running. In blogger, you can add more scripts that'll not be in conflict with your theme. This includes adding a disqus commenting system for convenience.

Hosted WordPress.org vs. Blogger

While I also run my own hosted WordPress.org blog at Deuts.NET, Blogger wins for continuity. I mean what if there comes a time where you cannot anymore support the fees related to a hosted blog - which should include the domain name and the hosting.

In blogspot, you can evaporate from the face of the earth but your blog will still be there.

This Site / Design is Broken in Internet Explorer 7

Just another IE hate post. Internet explorer should really flash in the hole! The google adsense below the posts in the permalink pages is overlapping the navigation links at the bottom.

I wonder how this will look worse in IE6.

Add to that the very slow speed with which Internet Explorer renders javascript just like the Disqus commenting system used in this blog. Also, the search box at the top is pushed further to the top so that half of it is only visible (this is based on the current template as of date of writing which is Thesis for Blogger).

Crap Internet Explorer!

Installing Debian Lenny

Installing Debian was never easy. It's not like any other popular distro that have a livecd where you can boot and install from. Yes, it has a livecd but you can't install from it. It's strictly for testing purposes. And in Debian, unlike other distros, it is empirical that you have a reliable wired internet connection to begin with.

I downloaded the first CD, which included the Gnome desktop environment and inserted the same upon boot. I chose the graphical interface for installation. But first, I made sure that I was directly connected to the internet, not through wireless interface. However, as it appeared later, my ethernet connection was disabled from the Windows interface. As such, I wasn't actually able to successfully connect to the internet upon installation. As a result, many critical applications were not installed. First and foremost in the list is the Synaptic Package Manager. Hence, I found my installation worthless as I wasn't even able to install more applications that badly needed.

Then came the sad part, I had to reinstall. This time I had to reinstall. This time, the installer was able to connect to the repository to download and install important applications to get going.

At last I had a working Debian Linux desktop.

Frequently Asked Questions

What this site is about?

Everything technology, from linux, php, wordpress, gadgets, etc.

How does it differ from your other sites?

I maintain an official blog at Deuts.NET. This serves as my sideblog specifically devoted to technology, which other people might not find interesting at all if I post them all to Deuts.NET.

More questions?

This FAQ will be updated as soon as I can think of any that people might have issues or doubts with.

Contact the Author

You can leave comment below to contact the author. Note though that any message left here will be published. If you have something confidential, you may email them directly to jotuvillo-at-deuts-dot-net.