Posterous gives up the fight against Tumblr with ‘Spaces’

Posterous, the creator of a simple blogging service via email, has dramatically shifted its focus. The company now revolves around a new product called Posterous Spaces, which allows users to privately share photos and videos with friends or family.

With Spaces, Posterous will compete less with other blogging platforms, such as Tumblr. This could be a wise move for Posterous considering that Tumblr just announced it had surpassed its 10 billionth post, and over the past year the service had grown from 7 to 28 million blogs. At one time, both microblogging services were growing at a similar pace, but recently Tumblr had all but defeated its rival in terms of growth.

Posterous Spaces will allow users to create individual Spaces for each of their social groups, such as family, roommates or friends, or for special events. Using the new Posterous mobile app, users will be able to access a Facebook-style stream of content from their various Spaces. Intuitive privacy controls will also give users the ability to share content with specific people.

On the Official Posterous Space, the company admitted that many users were probably happy with Posterous and may be weary of any major changes to the platform. However, the company promised that Posterous Spaces can be used in the same exact manner as yesterday’s service. Check out the official introduction to Spaces below.

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