The news that Posterous has sold out to Twitter has been greeted with mixed reactions at best, but most are agreed that the time to migrate their content is now. They have promised 'ample notice' before making any changes to the service as-is, but with all the former Posterous staff now working for Twitter there is only one way this service is going.

Although Posterous said in their statement that they will shortly be making it possible to export your content soon, you may be considering making your own move sooner rather than later. In my case, this blog also posts to Blogger and Wordpress anyway thanks to the Posterous tool which makes it a simple matter to cross-post, so the content will not be lost.

You can, however, already move your data to whichever alternative platform you will go to once Posterous does close, which most people are predicting will happen before 2012 is over at the latest.

Please visit this post on Lifehacker for detailed instructions on how to move your Posterous data.

I've found Posterous a pleasure to use because of its flexibility and ease of use; the ability to post via email was particularly attractive and it made adding photos or video very simple - no copying and pasting embed code, it does it all for you. However, rather than let Posterous (or Twitter, now) decide when this blog closes, I'm going to do it myself and therefore future blog posts will appear on Wordpress and possibly Blogger, if I can settle on a similarly simple method to put them on both.

If you've found this post on my Wordpress blog - stick around, that's where future posts will go - otherwise, I hope you'll join me over there!

I did have another blog post in mind to write but the news which broke this evening, that Posterous (the platform I am using to write this post) has been acquired by Twitter, has meant a change.

The post on Posterous's own site appears upbeat at first glance, enthusing about the new 'opportunities' and the 'exciting' future ahead, but it is easy to read between the lines. Despite the assurance that Spaces 'will remain up and running without disruption', they are already promising 'ample notice' if the service changes. That means they are certain to make changes, and when you consider that the motive behind the Twitter acquisition was not to buy the product, but to take on the staff, it's clear that those staff will not be focusing on Posterous in the future. The statement goes on to promise 'clear instructions' for users who wish to back up their content or move to another service soon. That does not bode well for the Posterous service as it currently stands. 

The last paragraph reads very much like a 'goodbye' to Posterous users, thanking them for their support and talking about the 'amazing journey' of the past four years. Once again, the conclusion must be that Posterous will be left to wither on the vine while the energy is concentrated on Twitter. 

The reason this matters is because the Posterous site has become popular due to its ease of use, and its ability to accept content via e-mail or web posting. It also features scheduled, cross-posting so you can submit the content once and it will appear wherever else you choose. For instance, this post will go to both my own site at ronniesoo.com and to my Blogger platform, and it will also appear as a link on my Facebook page, my LinkedIn and yes, my Twitter account. You can have more than one blog too, and run them from one account, and you can also point a custom URL to a Posterous site. In fact, I liked it so much that I recommended it to several of my friends, one of whom was looking for a place to continue writing after the demise of MySpace. In short, it made the Internet much easier for everyone, so it is very sad to think it will shortly be left to die off. 

As for Twitter itself, what they propose to do with the staff they've just hired en masse remains to be seen. It's possible they want the team to do something similar within Twitter, perhaps as a way of breaking free of that 140 character limit, but as the product that's already out there does the job perfectly well in my view, that is surely just reinventing the wheel? 

Whatever happens, I'm afraid it's more disruption and more work for bloggers who are regular users of this platform. For all the assurances of the platform remaining available without disruption, they do not say how long that will last and so it is recommended that users do migrate their content elsewhere as soon as Posterous provide directions for them to do so. 

The only good thing I can see in all of this is that it means more work for webmasters! 

I've been dreading subjecting myself to the ritual of sorting through my lists of Twitter accounts which I follow, because although there are several tools out there intended to help the process along, it is still a big job, especially if your list has grown since last you reviewed it.  

However this time around the job has become much easier, and it is all thanks to Twitcleaner. It is a tool that's been around for a while but has been completely rejigged, in order to comply with Twitter's own restrictions on auto-unfollowing. The current interface is very easy to use, sign in using your twitter account and let it run a report. When it's done (even with over 6000 in my follow list, it didn't take too long) you will get a Direct Message from TwitCleaner to tell you the report is ready to view. To access it, you have to follow them and the tool is set up so that only you can access the report prepared. 

The report is very detailed and groups into several types of 'potential garbage' users, listing how many users are just trying to sell, how many post nothing but links, identical tweets, and those that are using advertising networks. It also gives you a list of dormant users and tells you how long it's been since the user last tweeted, all at a glance. Not only that, but you get to see who is just posting quotes or simply retweeting someone else's posts, and even those who are 'self-obsessed' (the report's words); i.e. referring to themselves in their posts all the time, are listed. 

It makes it much easier for you to see what should be unfollowed - for me, I found about 1000 dormant users who had not posted in over 100 days; the users are brought up in a list of thumbnails and to unfollow all you had to do was click each one. There is a limit to how many you can select per day, because of Twitter's rules the app allows 500 accounts to be selected every 24 hours. 

I cannot recommend this highly enough for those of you who use Twitter regularly, I was amazed at the sheer number of spam accounts I had collected; some had multiple accounts under similar names and posted for a month, then disappeared never to be seen again - yet they were still in my list. Twitcleaner made it easy to spot these accounts, when you see groups of 'people' who had not posted in exactly 320 days, for example, it soon becomes clear they're spam accounts. 

Of course it is necessary to review your Twitter followers periodically, since if you do follow a lot of accounts you need to keep the ratio of followers to followed accounts within 10 percent; i.e. if you are following 5000 users and only 4500 follow you, then you may be disallowed from following any more until you unfollow some accounts. When you collect spam followers as most people do, they're effectively stopping you from following users you DO want. Twitcleaner makes the whole process of clearing out your list far easier than it has ever been before, so I recommend all Twitter users make use of this tool.

Oh, did I mention it was free to use? (That said, you are invited to donate if you have the wherewithal!) 

Twitcleaner is available at:

http://thetwitcleaner.com