3 Great Light Blogging Tools Compared

Written by Dana Oshiro / November 20, 2009 4:35 PM / 16 Comments

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Once the service for those serious enough to pay for the privilege to post, TypePad recently released a free "Micro" service. The company made the decision to offer a free product realizing the demand for a platform more formal than Twitter and less formal than Wordpress or Typepad's original product. ReadWriteWeb compared TypePad's Micro against 2 other leading light blogging tools. Below are our thoughts:

TypePad Micro: In addition to being able to blog via email, iPhone app, "Blog It" bookmarklet and the general WYSIWYG dashboard, this tool also allows users to cross post to Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook. My only complaint with TypePad is that there are only 2 design themes to choose from. For someone like me with very little design sense, it's a long process to find something right. As well, if you'd like to add another blog or add new design themes you are required to pay for a monthly subscription service.

Tumblr: This service offers users publishing via iPhone app, desktop widget, the Tumblr bookmarklet, text message, email, AIM and even via audio call-in. Tumblr's theme gallery offers hundreds of options for design. Users can also add their posts to Facebook and Twitter via the free customization. Tumblr allows users to create more than one blog and add more than one contributor for free; however, all edits show up in the same dashboard in chronological order. This means you may have to dig to revise an older post.

Posterous: Posterous is the original email publishing microblog. Users can email posts, publish them via the web editor or upload them from the PicPosterous iPhone app. The service allows users to set up auto posting to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Vimeo, Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress and Xanga. You can also choose to post to just one service in addition to your Posterous account by emailing flickr@posterous.com to specify Flickr or twitter@posterous.com to post to Twitter. Of the three services, Posterous offers an advantage in its ease-of-use and while it's lacked design abilities in the past, the company recently launched themes and theme import from Tumblr.

Other notable light blogging services include Soup.io, Vox and Noovo. If we've missed your favorite service let us know in the comments below.

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Comments

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I've tried all three of the reviewed light blogging services. Have found Posterous the easiest and so far very flexible. I floundered around a lot with TypePad and still am not satisfied. Tumblr was fairly simple but even tho it has many themes, I just couldn't find one I really liked. So it looks like I'm sticking with Posterous for now. BTW, they also have a bookmarklet which I often use.

Posted by: Jacque | November 20, 2009 4:02 PM

Of course Posterous is a useful blogging platform, but I use it (with the Bookmarklet) as a way of uploading Web pages I don't have time to read right away. I also use delicious, but Posterous is better for the odd/trivial/hard to classify pages I run across. It's a great digital "to read" pile. I see delicious as more like a public bulletin board where I post stuff I feel is of general interest. Maybe those distinctions don't work for everyone, but they work for me!

Posted by: Ernie Schell | November 20, 2009 5:47 PM

I prefer Tumblr, the Tumblr network is full of information and photography. And, it's way to easy to share and reblog anything you find worth a look.

Posted by: Shekhar | November 21, 2009 1:35 AM

Hi,

Got a tweet this morning from @ProBlogger that he was reading this article and I will certainly retweet it. I've written a post about using Posterous as an integral part of creating a lifestream and it one of my favorite blogging tools.

I didn't know that TypePad introduced a free version, but after reading this post, I can see that it would be a waste of my time since it doen't offer any advantages over Posterous.

Thanks for the comparisons.
@ileane

Posted by: Ileane Smith | November 21, 2009 3:49 AM

i use tumblr because its great and simple! i like it...

Posted by: abee | November 21, 2009 4:06 AM

Tumblr and Posterous both feature ubiquity of publishing but Tumblr does it all with so much more style to me.

Posted by: Dale Cruse | November 21, 2009 4:25 AM

I'm a newbie in the blogging world, so I decided to try Posterous. I discovered it after a tweet I read from Jason Calacanis' blog where he posted a pic of his dog :). So far (a week after I activated the account) I've found an easy and great tool, even more because it has integration with social media, and other google services like
feedburner, analytics.. so easy for a non-programmer person but that loves technology like me.

Posted by: Rebeca Zuniga | November 21, 2009 10:29 AM

i use Tumblr and Posterous and am happy with both. So far I have not tried typepad. But i am signing up for it now. Thanks for the information.

Posted by: Anamika | November 21, 2009 12:23 PM

posterous is the best. I am an early adopter of it. Happy with the changes it had undergone, to become the best of its category.

Posted by: Prepost | November 21, 2009 1:32 PM

I prefer tumblr over the rest...

Never knew opf posterous

thks

Posted by: Super | November 21, 2009 11:11 PM

Wow, this is wild, last week on Nov 18th at Web 2.0 Blogtronix also launched its own micro service and open source platform blogtronixMicro ;), I hope we don't have spies from Six Apart.
You guys should check it out http://blogtornixmicro.com . We have micro-blogging, groups, social networking, profiles, multimedia support, powerful admin with statistics, open community or private corporate community use.

Cheers,
Vassil

Posted by: Vassil Mladjov | November 22, 2009 6:43 AM

This is exactly what I was hoping to see as this post aligns with the poll I am taking over on LinkedIn, asking which blogging tool do you find the most useful

http://polls.linkedin.com/p/64690/vuzlh

Wordpress is leading the pack on the poll but I would agree that Posterous is very clean and easy (almost too easy to use).

Posted by: Mike Mostransky | November 23, 2009 3:59 AM

Posterous gets my vote too.

Easy to post from Google Reader, and using Posterous bookmartlet.

Can customise your posterous site too.

Posted by: Howard | November 23, 2009 9:20 AM

Plzzz could u help me how can I submit my website in technorati...?

Regards

JohnSmith
sensitivebit@gmail.com
http://easyfreeonlineincome.com

Posted by: johnsmith | November 26, 2009 1:11 AM

I personally use tumblr, simply for ease of use, I'm just about to check out posterous. After reading the various suggestions about it.

John Smith :

You have to claim your blog on technorati.. that's if it gets accepted..this could take a little time..

Posted by: jacob stewart | November 26, 2009 8:33 AM

I use tumblr for the simple fact that it IS simple. Even though I too have used a theme that I found online I have been able to play and change it with ease and zero HTML knowledge. I have gained a large following from it and it is actually generating income and credibility amongst other bloggers. Very few Tumblelogs have been able to do this. it has a lot of promise and I can see it being able to catch up with typepad and blogger in the future, especially with so many updates that have been added.

Posted by: Marko | December 1, 2009 12:56 PM