Earlier today, we released the first annual report on the State of Private Sharing. The results illustrate what you've told us all year: You want more control over who sees what you share and an easy way enabling everyone to participate.

The response to Posterous Spaces confirms that controlled sharing is here to stay.  In addition to accelerated new-user growth, we've seen skyrocketing engagement.  Four times as many photos and five times as many videos are shared on private Spaces as on public Spaces.

And we're just getting started - many of you have noticed the performance improvements that rolled out this week, and we have several other features planned that will make sharing with the people you care about easier than ever before.

In related news, we're thrilled to announce that Brian Frank has joined Posterous as our Chief Product Officer.  Brian's accomplishments in product definition and design across web and mobile services are numerous, and we couldn't be more pleased to have him on board. You can read more from Brian on his own Posterous Space, http://www.brianfrank.com.

Survey Details:

We commissioned a survey of 2,014 U.S. social networking users aged 18 and over in October, 2011. This means that we paid Harris Interactive to field the survey for us.  They have asked us to include this disclaimer below.

Data for this survey were collected by Harris Interactive Service Bureau ("HISB") on behalf of Posterous Inc. HISB was responsible for the data collected and Posterous was responsible for the survey design and data analysis.

Hello again. Can you believe it’s been ten whole days since we first launched Posterous Spaces? Never content to rest on our laurels, I wanted to take some time to let everyone know about a few recent changes we’ve made to the service. Each is designed to make it easier for you to manage your Spaces. 

But before I get ahead of myself, I first wanted to express how thrilled the team is with the overwhelming response to Spaces. Based on your feedback and our internal metrics, the world is seriously loving our new reading experience - our comment and liking activity has skyrocketed. 

That being said, I must admit that the launch wasn't 100% perfect. In our haste to get the new service launched, we unknowingly made it harder for you to manage your posts and comments. Needless to say we burned the midnight oil to fix these hiccups, and apologize for any headaches this may have caused. Fortunately, one of the biggest benefits of moving to Spaces is our ability to develop and implement new features faster (let's just say that with our previous code, there were some creaky parts that prevented us from improving as quickly as everyone would have liked). 

Over the past several days I've thoroughly enjoyed talking directly with so many of you on Twitter. It reminds me of our early days, when we listened hard, worked fast and got better every day. To that end, I'd love to hear your ideas for how we can improve – regardless of whether you’re using Spaces for your public blog or to share privately with friends and family.  Email me or contact me on Twitter.

Thanks again for your support and input. And as always, stay tuned for more great stuff from Posterous.

Sachin

We’re super-excited to announce the launch of Posterous Spaces. It’s our brand new service for the Web, iPhone and Android that replaces the current service.

Why did we create it? Simple – because we think you should be able to share online like you do in real life. That’s why you'll find Posterous Spaces has intuitive privacy controls that make it a breeze to share with the right people, every time.  

Whether you want to create a public blog, a private place to share family vacation photos or start a group for your classmates to stay in touch, you can create a Space for it.  Adding members to your Space is a snap, and your members can participate through your Space's web site, their mobile device or via email.

And because sharing shouldn’t end when you’re on-the-go, we’re also announcing Posterous Spaces for the iPhone. It gives you all the functionality of Posterous Spaces, right in your pocket. Get it.

We know a lot of you were perfectly happy with Posterous and wouldn’t want us to change a thing. Rest assured, with Posterous Spaces you can keep doing everything you’ve been doing with yesterday’s service. Plus we’ve added many cool new features to enjoy, including five new professionally-designed themes, a beautiful new reading experience, 3x faster loading times, slick new profile pages and more.

We can’t wait for you to give Posterous Spaces a try, and we look forward to your feedback. So take it for a spin, and enjoy!