So there is no recent review on the web that convinced me enough to decide which platform to choose for blogging. I am a long-time user of the Wordpress platform (not Wordpress.com) and always loved it. However, the last automatic upgrade made me realize that I don't need it. Granted that It has great features for pretty much everything, you can choose from an infinite number of templates, and it is easy to use. But, of course there is a big but, you have to setup all that. And ensure that all keeps up-to-date and working together. It gets painful at times. Besides, you are responsible for everything - backups, plugins, services, storage, etc. I mean, take a look at the explanation page on how to setup the "post by e-mail" feature on Wordpress that is so seamless on Posterous. I have the knowledge to do all that but I realized I was investing more time on keeping my blog technically sound than posting. It was time to change.

So here is how I am deciding for Posterous instead of Tumblr. I am grouping my decisions into four categories in order of importance to me: Usability, built-in features, integration with social services like Twitter and Facebook, and design. Each platform gets a grade ranging from 1 to 5 in each category. In the end, the choice of a platform is resumed to what you are looking for, of course. In my opinion, it is a matter of deciding whether you prefer powerful features, usability or design. I chose Posterous great usability.

Usability
Wordpress has too many options and customizations. That is great if your blog has hundreds of services, several authors and editors, and millions of visitors everyday. Then you really need the control the platform offers you. And it certainly gives you that kind of feeling of being in control of things. 4 points.

But I am looking for simplicity and I think Posterous is clearly the winner here. The interface is easy to use and you are good to go faster than in any other service. Just send an e-mail to post@posterous.com (like I am doing now). Posterous user interface, in my opinion, is a blast. It is very well thought and very intuitive. You can see they clearly put an effort into making things just right. I give Posterous a sound 5 points.

Tumblr, on the other hand, starts by almost forcing you to setup a bunch of things. After you create your login, it doesn't even wait for you to breath. It already wants you to setup your blog - description, appearance, and a bunch of other things. Some features are also less visible than in Posterous like the Google Analytics integration. Tumblr gets 3 points for all that annoyance.

Built-in features
Wordpress is clearly a winner here. With 10,277 plugins at the moment of this writing, you can do pretty much everything you want with it. But you have to install the plugins and keep them running with your version of Wordpress. That means pain! I give Wordpress 4 points again.

Posterous and Tumblr are tied here and frankly they are very similar in their services. It is like the founders of both services are brothers or something. So both have the essential you would expect: Template customization, comment system, integration with FeedBurner and Google Analytics, integration with social services (e.g., Twitter, Facebook), and so on. But you are limited to what they offer. Want something more? You will have to wait for the service to release it. 3 points each.

Integration with social services
Wordpress looses badly here. If you want to integrate, you have to setup a plugin first. Actually, you have to find the right plugin for you first. That means you can easily loose a couple of hours just to find and setup a plugin that integrates your blog to Twitter. And what about Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, and so on? For each service you need to setup things. Again, very painful! Wordpress gets 2 points here.

Posterous is again the winner in my opinion. The "autopost" feature allows you to easily setup any service you want in very few steps. It is very intuitive too. And you can decide where to broadcast your content by e-mail too. Want to post to Posterous and announce only on Twitter, send an e-mail to twitter@posterous.com. And so on. Again, 5 points.

Tumblr has a "services" menu where it is easy to integrate to Twitter, Facebook or a RSS feed. What about other services such as Flickr or Picasa? And how about broadcasting to just one or two of these services? Can't. Or at least I couldn't find. 3 points.

Design
This is a tricky one. Design has certain characteristics that are taste-based, no matter how well you justify it technically. This way, Wordpress again is very good. With its templates, you can get very powerful and beautiful customizations. It is actually not up to Wordpress but to designers to provide a good design to your page. Or, it is up to your taste in choosing the right template and tweaking it to your needs. 4 points because depending on what you need, your hands will have to get dirty.

Both Posterous and Tumblr allow you to choose from themes and customize them using HTML and CSS if you fashion that. Both have very intuitive interfaces and it is easy to change the layout of things around. However, Tumblr has a lead here because it seems to have a lot more templates to choose from and more well-thought ones. This is not a big issue to me so I didn't really invest much time in figuring out which one is really better but Tumblr seems to be more appropriate if you care about how nice your blog looks. 3 points to Posterous and 4 to Tumblr.

The veredict
In my point of view (you are welcome to totally disagree), Posterous is the winner with 16 points, Wordpress comes second with 14 and Tumblr is last with 13 points. Again, these scores would certainly change if you are looking for something else. If you want a simple platform more focused on design, go for Tumblr. But if usability matters for you as it matters for me, go for Posterous. And of course, if you want all the power in the world and don't mind wasting some time setting things up, then Wordpress is your best bud.

In the review I liked the most, comparing just Tumblr and Posterous, the author summarizes their differences very nicely:

"Tumblr is a New York company and Posterous is a Silicon Valley company. Or, to put it another way: Posterous is an engineered product, while Tumblr is a designed product."

It is up to you to decide.