thearchivist.funPosterous shuts down a year after Twitter buys it
VentureBeat reported on 15 February 2013 that Posterous would be turned off on 30 April, along with its mobile apps. Twitter had acquired the company in March 2012 for an undisclosed price, and the report noted the shutdown came almost exactly a year later. The announcement said the team would focus all its effort on Twitter. Users could request a backup of each Space at posterous.com, receive an email when it was ready and download a zip with photos, videos and documents, but backups had to be requested before 30 April. WordPress and Squarespace offered importers. The report did not mention Tumblr. The article gave traffic figures: 12 million monthly unique visitors in March 2010, about 1.33 million at the time of writing, against about 26 million for Tumblr and about 30 million for WordPress.com.
Context and provenance
Posterous is a typical acquihire ending: the product's team was wanted, the product was not. The useful detail for a researcher is the narrow window: backups had to be requested in advance, and a blog whose owner missed the date may have no surviving copy outside web archives.
A Posterous blog may survive in three forms: the owner's backup zip, an import into WordPress or Squarespace, and archived pages from before April 2013. Each preserves different things. A backup holds photos, videos and documents, while an archived page shows the layout and the comments as visitors saw them.
Transmission timeline
- 2012-03
Twitter acquires Posterous.
- 2013-02-15
The shutdown is announced.
- 2013-04-30
Posterous and its mobile apps are turned off.
Why it matters
A blogging service bought for its team was closed within a year, with a backup window that required the owner to act in time.
What remains uncertain
The reasons for the closure are the reporter's interpretation. The acquisition price was not disclosed.
Sources and evidence
- VentureBeat: One year after being acquired by Twitter, Posterous shuts it all down
30 April shutdown, March 2012 acquisition, backup procedure, importers, traffic comparison.
Editorial review: 2026-10-22. New evidence may change this account.