We all have heard the news that Twitter acquired Posterous and reactions to this news have varied from apathy to dismay. I wish the people at Posterous all the success in the world and I hope their future implementations will be as good as the one they have now. We, the general public, are a bit more savvy concerning the lifespan of social media services, so the acquisition was met, by many, with resignation. We learned from the demise of delicious et al. The ideas will live on in some capacity or another (via the talent that Twitter just acquired), but the place, that location known as Posterous might very well cease to exist. And we grow a little more resigned to the ephemerality of it all. An optimism being tempered, slowly.
As someone who had settled into Posterous and did greatly enjoy its ease and overall clarity, I was saddened by this acquisition. As someone whose organization (not mine as in I owned it, but mine as in I worked there) was acquired and merged (two separate events), I am realistic enough to know this move does not signal great things for Posterous the service. Posterous the place. My little nest amidst all that chaotic chatter. So the last few hours has me importing my Posterous blog back to WordPress and my original domain, michaelseangallagher.org. That is where you will now find me. I never had any problem with WordPress, but was just attracted to that simplicity of Posterous, that cleanliness. It freed my brain to write rather than focus on functionality. It still does.
We move on. I have switched from Typepad to Blogger to WordPress to Tumblr to Posterous and now back to WordPress. I have lugged my 2000+ posts over 8 years along with these moves. I imported most of the comments, archived most of the dynamic energy, bottled it up and brought it over. And even now I wonder, in a pouty moment of ego-laden purity, whether it is best to just dump the whole thing and recreate my presence from scratch. Life and my intellectual and creative impact on it as merely a mandala, brushed aside with a breeze to make way for a newer incarnation. Moving, in the digital or physical space, forces one to pause and reflect.
And what of home? This space was mine, at least partly negotiated by me, and I inhabited it. And now it is gone (or I perceive it slouching down a path towards being gone) and I sigh. Many memories, many events, many points of progress, clarity, and confusion. It is, at the end of the day, an open diary and I confided in it. And the world knew I was here because of it. Not that it won’t from WordPress, but this was my soapbox. At least for the last few years. I treasured in it and certainly took refuge in it. And I will miss it.
So, goodbye Posterous; our time together has come to an end. Thanks for helping me along on this leg of this journey. I am appreciative.
At some point, I suppose, I will redirect this site from here to michaelseangallagher.org, but for now I will let this linger a bit here. A little monument to a good few years.