Lee Dale

Tumblr, clearly better designed than Posterous.

@malcolmbastien asks What The Heck Makes Tumblr a “Designed” Company?:

I’m asking this question based of a statement made in a popular blog post that was published two weeks ago, Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous’s Ass

Design is precisely why I’m here and precisely why I disregarded posterous.

Posterous is supposed to be simpler (No signup! Just email!) but they’re actually introducing the unfamiliar through a convoluted process. (Heck, Posterous has devoted 40% of their homepage to explaining how simple their process is. And none of it makes sense. “We reply instantly with your new posterous.” Wait, what? Can’t I just visit my blog? Why do I need it emailed to me?)

With Tumblr, there’s a simple dashboard and bookmark bar which allows me to post content easily, while I’m browsing the Web. With Posterous, I’m hung up on this idea of having to get email involved instead of publishing directly in the browser. In general, this is more complex as it’s pulling me away from the content. In the end, Tumblr is designed to be stupid simple and rather obvious, instead of just saying they’re stupid simple and obvious. (I understand that Posterous has bookmark bars and such too, but I don’t care at this point; they’ve lost me with this email thing, never mind the lack of a stupid simple signup process and blog URL as found on Tumblr’s homepage.)

In reality, Posterous is too smart for their own good and they’ve tried to solve a problem that no one cares about (less signup, more posting). In order to solve this problem they’ve introduced a convoluted method of posting which they’re trumpeting as the end all be all when, in reality, it’s a mess. And, lookee here, without all the runaround and confusing explanation, Tumblr offers email publishing too.

Simply put, their taglines say it all:

Posterous is the dead simple way to put anything online using email.

Tumblr is the easiest way to blog.

I don’t want to use email; I want to blog. Thanks, Tumblr.