First of all I have to say I am a fan of Posterous. I use them for about 7 of my sites so anything I am writing here is totally in good faith.

In the past 6 months, Posterous has  been in the news sporadically for not so positive reasons. First of all they ‘arrogantly’ tried to poach users from competing blogging platforms thereafter, they have been blasted for losing the battle against Tumblr. Not too long ago, the co founder of Posterous, Garry Tan left to join YC. That of course does not leave positive vibes.

The problem with Posterous that they are not the best at anything. Ok, not anything, they haves the damn easiest way of starting a blog. That is where it ends. Lets take a look at their two biggest competitors.

WordPress: They are undoubtedly the best at extensibility in design and plugins. Their stats speak for them

Tumblr: They are the best at design and community. Their stats say they are leaving Posterous the dust to eat

Unfortunately, what Posterous is best at is the shortest part of the blogging experience; starting. And for any blog, you do it just once

I think the reason Posterous is not the best at anything is that there is a lack of focus on what they want to be. Just look at the campaign at battling the competitors. They wanted to be a photo blogging tool by importing Twitpic photos (which I supported), they wanted to import Tumblr without having social capabilities and design that is the fulcrum of Tumblr. They also wanted to import WordPress without having the extensibility of WordPress and of course could not support Plugins. Ha! they even wanted to import from Ning! What the hell was that about?! (BTW, while raving about the importing, they did not maintain permalinks, thereby wanting people to leave broken links all over the web)

Recently, they have pitched themselves as a platform for groups

Hi Sachin Agarwal, what is Posterous for?

Steve Jobs says the hardest part in making a good product is not deciding the features you should put it but deciding the good things you have to leave out. So my advise to you is sit down, think of what you want to be and go for it.

I wish I could take my own advice.