Tried using Posterous for a group writing exercise; not a top success
I thought that Posterous might be a useful, easy, collaboration tool. The barriers to entry are low and the user interface is email. However, it didn't really work. I made a crucial, but probably inevitable, mistake. And, for sharers there is the need to create an account. I hadn't counted on that. I thought that by nominating a number of email addresses that those addresses would just be able to post.
The mistake was setting up a new Posterous blog in my existing account and sharing it with a number of collaborators. This meant that all the profile information and "post everywhere" stuff was active for the new blog, too. There wasn't a separate group identity. I had to delete all my personal stuff just so it didn't look like everyone was posting to my blog. And, all of a sudden the group posts were appearing in my Twitter account and other blogs. I had to turn off the post everywhere feature.
What would have been better: create a new Posterous account. But, this would have required a new email. Posterous is so easy because it ties your blog to your email. It receives an email from x@y and bangs it into x@y's blog. Dead simple. This makes it a great personal tool but not a great collaborative tool.
The work around that springs to mind would be setting up a new e-mail account for each new Posterous and then nominating your primary account as a collaborator along with other collaborators. But, hey, get a wiki.
