Exactly a decade ago, I landed on Posterous Spaces. This was before any of the currently common messaging platforms that exist were built. M wanted a way to backup texts and at that point in time, Posterous Spaces looked like a terrific option. We’d email the texts over to an email address and they’d be published as private posts on our domain. All was good until Twitter acquired them and non-nonchalantly shut them down in 2012. Interestingly, they still have the domain active! The co-founders went on to build Posthaven which I believe is still pretty active.
When Posterous Spaces shutdown, for whatever reason, I missed downloading the export and with that all those messages vanished. Or so I thought until today when I chanced upon some old e-mails and found copies of those sent texts. The mother of all decentralization tools – E-mail to the rescue! The next mini project is to convert these emails to a more digestible format. Decades from now, I’m intrigued to see which of the current backup mechanisms will stand the test of time.
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