Right at the outset I must admit that the title of this post is a fair bit exaggerated. Marco leaving Tumblr isn’t the sole cause of my reduced usage of Posterous. As is always the case, these things are complicated. So I shall explain.
Most important to note is that Posterous is a splendid service. It is well designed, managed, supported and its use of email as a significant interface is downright retro brilliant. To linger a bit on support, to make the point on how good Posterous is: head honcho Sachin Agarwal once spent multiple hours over many days trying to hunt down an import problem that blocked transferring my posts from a [by now] obscure CMS/blog system called Nucleus. These guys are dedicated. And I still use Posterous heavily for my family blog, where the email based interface beats anything else, to transmit the mundane activities of grandchildren to doting grandparents.
For their part, Tumblr is quick to respond to questions and offer help (though not necessarily as dedicated to fixing them). If you are shopping for a mini-blogging platform, the two platforms do offer an embarrassment of riches. But with all that, I find myself using my personal Tumblr site a lot more than my Posterous one (despite Posterous’s autopost feature which can make the content appear in both places). And I am yet to explain why.
People like lists. So here is one with three reasons why Tumblr won out for my personal mini-blogging.
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