Update: 11:22pm PT: We’re done with our work for tonight and have done testing to see that things are working as they should and hopefully with improved performance. However, if you encounter issues, please let us know at feedback@postlets.com.

Update: 6:17pm PT: Closed access and started work.

As mentioned at the beginning of the week, we’re optimizing things tonight, Friday, October 10th, from about 6pm PT to 12 midnight PT. Since it is “after hours” and only for a short period, we did not send an email notification, and we will update here as we progress. All account access is unavailable during this time, but postlets will remain available and visible for visitors to view.

Thanks.

Update, October 5th: The site is back to full functionality. Thanks for your patience over the weekend.

October 3rd: As mentioned on the login page, we’re upgrading our servers this weekend, Friday, October 3rd, through Sunday, October 5th. During this time we need to freeze new account signups and activations, as well as new postlets and editing postlets. All active postlets will remain available and visible during this time.

Thanks for your patience, and see you on the other side with bigger and better servers…

– January 19th, 12:35am PT –
We’ve successfully migrated to the new servers! All data and files have been moved over, all functionality has been tested and restored, and everything should be just as you left it. As always, thanks again for your patience with us, and please let us know if anything isn’t working for you as it should be.

– January 18th, 7:00pm PT –
Hello, it is 7pm PT, and we’re locking down the site to logins and updates as we need to make the database static to do the final migration to the new servers. We’ll then need to propagate some settings out to the world so everybody will start seeing the new server and not the old one.

We’ll update again when we’re done.

Thanks!

Hello everybody. First of all, let us apologize for disabling logins for you to manage your postlets for most of the day. The past few days, and then peaking today, traffic to the site has been overwhelming. Our servers are buckling under the strain.

In a fast decision, we’re moving up to even bigger servers. BIG. With the move, we should be able to handle the current traffic no problem. However, we will need to disable logins again sometime in the next couple days to complete the move. As always, we appreciate your support and patience through these growing pains.

Thanks,
The postlets guys

So, here’s the big news: we’ll be ending our Plus promotion in two weeks on September 15th, 2007. What is/was the Plus promotion? It’s what we’ve been running for a long, long time, where all rental and real estate postlets are automatically upgraded to their Plus versions (although users had the option of not upgrading as well). It’s time for us to end the promotion, so you’ll finally be able to use those Plus credits some of you have been getting and storing up.

At that time, all postlets will start out in their Standard versions. And at the end of the creation process, if you have Plus credits, you’ll be given the option to upgrade the postlet to Plus (you’ll be able to upgrade at any time after that as well). But what if you don’t have any credits, or you run out, or you don’t have any more friends or colleagues to refer? No worries, we’ll be rolling out our PayPal payment functionality at the same time so you’ll finally be able to just buy some credits.

We’re still finishing up the details, such as additional help page entries and final testing, but it’ll be here soon enough. So, in the meantime, start cranking out those postlets to make the most of these last two weeks of all you can eat postlets Plus!

There was a recent blog entry on Active Rain that suggested that postlets wasn’t in compliance with craigslist’s Terms of Use. It said that using postlets on craigslist could get you banned and recommended that agents don’t use postlets with craigslist. Lots of confusion ensued.

First of all, let us say that postlets is in full compliance with craigslist’s ToU. Period. We had discussions with Jim back in January, and he told us two things: 1) remove any links back to postlets.com and 2) make sure you comply with the “posting agents” section of their terms of use. There was no mention of external links to “commercial” sites (more on this later).

We addressed 1) right away by removing all links back to our site. This meant that we had to think of other ways of displaying photos, but we had no choice. We’ve always said that we want to abide by both the letter and spirit of the ToU and be good CL citizens, and we mean it.

Addressing 2) was easy. We’re simply not a posting agent. Here’s what the ToU states:

A “Posting Agent” is a third-party agent, service, or intermediary that offers to post Content to the Service on behalf of others. To moderate demands on craigslist’s resources, you may not use a Posting Agent to post Content to the Service without express permission or license from craigslist.

It further goes on to say that you agree not to:

use any form of automated device or computer program that enables the submission of postings on craigslist without each posting being manually entered by the author thereof (an “automated posting device”), including without limitation, the use of any such automated posting device to submit postings in bulk, or for automatic submission of postings at regular intervals.

Postlets clearly does not post on behalf of the lister nor does it automate the submission of ads on craigslist. Each ad on craigslist requires the user (i.e. the author) to manually create a post, copy/paste our HTML code, receive the confirmation email from craigslist, and respond to it.

Okay. So, what about external links? This is where craigslist’s ToU gets a bit more vague and ambiguous. It states that you agree not to post content:

that includes links to commercial services or web sites, except as allowed in “services”;

So what exactly does “commercial” mean? We felt in the past that adding a link to property-specific information that provides buyers with relevant and incremental knowledge about the property would be permissible. We include fields for “additional property information” and a virtual tour, but with strict messaging that states that these links need to be used for their intended purposes and that they have to be property-specific. Most people listen, but naturally not everyone does. We suspect the bulk of the listings getting flagged are misusing the links (we understand there’s some petty competitive flagging going on as well).

After reading all of the comments on Active Rain, however, we were no longer certain that including fields for external links was in the best interest of our users and craigslist’s users. We thought about it for a while and decided to remove the “Additional Links” section from future craigslist ads. This might not please everyone (you never can), but we feel it’s better to err on the conservative side and that it’s the right thing to do. As always, we welcome your feedback.

We hope this clears things up. Thanks to all our users who’ve stuck with us through all the ups and downs of trying to provide our service.