Posterous Acquired By Twitter

Twitter has acquired Posterous, the blog-posting service that grew out of the Y Combinator program in 2008. The terms of the sale were not disclosed, but Posterous seems to have traded its staff for Twitter’s wider audience.
In September Posterous launched Spaces to give users more sharing control over their content and so far, the new features have been successful in increasing engagement. According to the company’s blog, “four times as many photos and five times as many videos are shared on private Spaces as on public Spaces.”
Shortly afterward, the company started raising money. The most recent round of funding through Redpoint Ventures and Jafco Ventures brought in $5 million, for a total of $10.1 million since the founders first participated in the Y Combinator fundraising and mentoring program in 2008.
News of the acquisition follows a report in late February that Posterous had “absolutely no plans to sell,” according to TheNextWeb’s sources.
But sometime between then and yesterday’s announcement, Posterous changed its tune. They wrote, “We couldn’t be happier about bringing our team’s expertise to a product that reaches hundreds of millions of users around the globe.”
Twitter explained in a blog post, “We’re always looking for talented people who have the passion and personality to join Twitter. Acquisitions have given us people and technology that have enabled us to more quickly build a better Twitter for you.”
They weren’t kidding. Gawker got a hold of Twitter’s 2011 financials and learned that the company was hemmorhaging money, in part by doubling its team of 450 employees in mid 2011 to nearly 900. Twitter has since been working on new sources of revenue, including a self-serve ad platform, paid access to historical tweets, and smartphone ads.
Twitter has assured Posterous users that the blogging platform “will remain up and running without disruption,” while Posterous has an FAQ page that will at some point have more information on how to transfer your files in the event that this changes. But our sister blog, AllTwitter, advises users to start packing now.