Posterous gets a makeover with Spaces and takes on Facebook & Google+

Is it just me, or are all of our favourite online services getting a bit of a makeover at the moment?

Posterous is the latest online platform to go all Gok Wan on us, with a minimalistic design and a brand new way of sharing content, which is much more akin to the likes of Facebook and Google+ than you’d expect.

The super simple blogging platform has garnered a pretty huge, dedicated following since it launched in 2008 with its hassle-free posting options, simple email publishing and social sharing.

Many people tend to go a little bit crazy when things they’ve been so used to for so long get a shake up. But fear not. All of the things that make Posterous special are staying put – it may just take a mid-afternoon procrastination session to get to grips with it all.

Now there are a few smaller things that have been tweaked, the Reader looks different and there’s now a Popular and Activity stream.

However, the biggest change is Spaces.

Spaces are a bit weird. Really they’re just what we used to call Sites, but they’ve turned into little places where users can now share all kinds of content with whoever they please as apposed to just being personal blogs. Spaces come with a custom web address, lots of customisation options and the chance to add different contributors.

If this seems a bit like a blogging platform being jammed together with Google+ then that’s because it kind of is.

Nothing will change if you already have a blog on Posterous, in fact if all you want to do in the future is just set up a standard blog then that’s fine too. But you now have freedom to use your site in many more ways, as a blog or as more of a group, sharing it with whoever you want regardless of whether they have Posterous or not.

There’s a handy little intro video on the Posterous home page which is definitely worth watching. There’s an interesting little dig at Facebook in there too which suggests that even if you make something private on the social network, all of your friends could well just share it publicly anyway – an interesting point which is probably quite true, but I wouldn’t say it’s specific to Facebook…

Have a play around with Spaces and let us know what you think.