Posterous, From SaaS to PaaS Using an API

by Kin Lane on 06/10/2011

In a single announcement yesterday, the blogging service Posterous went from Software as a Service (SaaS) to Platform as a Service (PaaS), with the introduction of a full set of APIs.

The new set of RESTful APIs give developers access to methods and actions that were formerly available only to the core Posterous engineering team including the ability to create new sites, manage users, posts, comments, custom themes and other data for those sites.

Beyond just exposing the core posterous technology via as a simple set of RESTful APIs, Posterous has delivered their API documentation as an interactive set of tools allowing developers to see every available method, interface with these methods and experiment bydynamicallychanging the paramaters and inspecting responses, all within the browser.

Posterous has merged the concept of API documentation and API explorer into a single set of interactive developer documentation. This steps up the game, in that not only should your documentation be simple and complete, but also functional.

The new Posterous APIs have evolved Posterous from a service where users can come and setup blogs, to a platform that companies can use as a backbone for their own blog and site managment systems.