Once the niche powerhouse dominating this middle space, Tumblr has since seen Posterous, the somewhat unremarkable email-to-blog platform, rise from obscurity, iterate at lightning pace, and start to build up well-deserved web buzz and high profile users.
This tumbling and posturing web-aholic has been using both sites for quite some time, so the head-to-head you're about to read is filled with intimate knowledge of both applications.
Posting Options
Both Posterous and Tumblr have bookmarklets that make grabbing content as you browse and posting it to your respective site easy as can be. When it comes to posting original entries from the web, Tumblr's text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio, and video options are just plain killer.
Posterous, though not really made with the web-created post in mind, does have a web posting WYSIWYG editor that does just fine. It's a little bit more difficult to post and preview, but that's not where Posterous tries to excel.
Posterous' knockout posting punch is email — the technology that most of us take for granted on a daily basis. What Posterous can do with your emails is simply incredible, and we recommend creating all of your posts by emailing [email protected].
The email post creation process is dead simple. Email whatever you want — photos, videos (even iPhone 3G S vids), audio — to [email protected] and it will do the rest. Your subject line becomes the title, the email body your post description, and you can even add tags to your post by adding them with the appropriate syntax to the subject line: ((tag: social media, photo)).
We'd also be remiss if we didn't discuss mobile options for posting to Tumblr and Posterous. While we've made it clear that email is the way to go with Posterous, we haven't yet stressed the fact that this means your blogging activities are incredibly mobile on any smartphone. Take a video on your iPhone 3G S, email it to Posterous, and instantly have it pushed out to the other social sites you have integrated (like Twitter). Tumblr, however, does have a pretty fantastic iPhone app, and even allows for audio posts if you call 1-866-584-6757 and record your message. Their email and SMS posting options work just fine, but they're just not as exciting as the competition's.
Simply because email access is more ubiquitous than a full blown web experience (especially while on the run), and we love posting multiple photos (and especially video) that others can download, Posterous takes an edge up on the competition.
Customization
You can do a lot to customize, tweak, and own your Tumblr theme. There are a bevy of free themes that you can choose from, HTML and CSS whiz kids can create their own, and there are also some pretty nifty Tumblr themes available for purchase from third-party developers.
On the flip side, you can do absolutely nothing with your Posterous theme. For some, this is a deal breaker, while others can accept Posterous' clean site design for what it is.
The clear and obvious winner here is Tumblr.
Community
One of Tumblr's hidden gems is an active community of Tumblr enthusiasts who will not only tumble across the web and post a variety of content, but also subscribe to each other, reblog and like posts, and basically spread the Tumblr love far and wide (in much the same way that RTs distribute content on Twitter). The community element is a warm and fuzzy thing that is also tangible in the site's new Tumblarity scoring system, though we do think that this creates a bit of a popularity contest.
Community on Tumblr is also facilitated by the dashboard design which pulls in content from the people you follow, similar to Twitter. You can reblog and favorite items from your dashboard, which will influence those users' Tumblarity score.
On Posterous, community is still a work in process. So even though you can subscribe to other users, and they to you, there's less sharing and community support. You can also favorite items, but there's no quick way to reshare content from your My Subscriptions page. Clearly, Posterous is still playing catch up on this front.
Integrations
Posterous has been on a tear when it comes to social integrations. You can basically import content from any blogging platform ever created (you can export too), and push your Posterous content out to any social site where you have a following. This creates a harmonious situation where your content lives where you want it to live, and a single Posterous video post could auto-post to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo, and blog sites, while photo posts could automatically add images to your Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa accounts.
Here's the real kicker. Say you have autoposting enabled for all of your favorite social sites, but you're only in the mood to tweet a video, just update Flickr, or only post to Posterous. You can do that simply by switching up the email address you send your content to. In a twitter mood, email your post to [email protected]. Only want to update Flickr, send your email to [email protected]. Want to do just those two, that's okay too; email [email protected]. You have complete control of your content and where it goes.
Tumblr, however, is a little in the dark ages and only goes so far as to enable posting all Tumblr posts to Twitter. It's an all or nothing situation, to Twitter only, that we really hope they improve in the future. We do, however, appreciate that Tumblr supports auto-import of RSS feeds, while Posterous does not. So, should you want to import your blog's RSS feed, or your Digg activity, Tumblr is perfect for those behaviors.
At the end of the day, however, we have to award the integrations category to our social site happy friend, Posterous, simply because you truly can post anything, anywhere.
Extras and Goodies
With Posterous you can manage a group blog with multiple collaborators and turn an email list into a group blog from the comfort of your inbox. The best part is that your collaborators don't even have to create a Posterous account.
You also might have noticed that Posterous has snuck its way into 11 of your favorite Twitter clients, making it a viable competitor to TwitPic, and giving it a leg up over Tumblr when it comes to posting photos to Twitter.
And most importantly, Posterous is perfect for the analytics types who want simple integration with Google Analytics. No need to add special code to your site, simply input the Google Analytics Domain ID in your settings. Oh so simple, and oh so Posterous.
In opposition, we have Tumblr and their robust API that many a third-party developer has leveraged to build Tumblr-friendly apps. Must-try extras include Tumbltape to turn any tumblelog into an instant playlist, the Tumblr tag cloud (though Posterous does come with a tag list), and Dial2Do for transcribed audio posts. Tumblr Image Viewer, the Tumblelog Facebook app, and OpenTumblr are also worth a look.
The Celebrity Factor
Maybe celebrities shouldn't matter when it comes to web services, but the reality is that when a celebrity uses your product, others notice. Take, for example, the combo Shaq/Ashton/Oprah effect on Twitter, and Twitter's subsequent coming of age party. Celebrity matters.
When it comes to flashy Hollywood and music industry types, Tumblr is certainly the shinier star. They've got Katy Perry, Pete Wentz, Josh Groban, and John Legend to name just a few.
But geekdom has a higher standard for celebrity credibility, and most of us are likely more impressed by the fact that Steve Rubel, Guy Kawasaki, Jason Calacanis, all keep a regularly updated Posterous.
We can't declare a winner on this front, since celebrity is very subjective, but we do know that right now Tumblr's star power is influencing monthly traffic numbers that far surpass those of Posterous.
And the Winner is...
Certainly personal preference will win out, and we've given you enough tools to make an educated decision, but we think by rolling out features faster than humanly possible, Posterous is poised to be the future of this middle blogging space.