Failed attempt to describe it by TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/12/tumblr-1540-percent-pagevie...

I'd say design, wording, layout etc. make Tumblr much more hip than the more business-like posterous. Compare their about-pages: http://www.tumblr.com/about (cool), http://posterous.com/about (boring)

I chose Tumblr over posterous, just because it looks like more fun.

Thanks, I missed that article.

I was wondering if there was something deeper to it than just great design - perhaps some kind of special viral loop that tumblr does well that posterous doesn't?

I think the reason is that Tumblr is pretty hip and it's geared towards these streams of consciousness - type posts.

Most Tumblr blogs seem to consist of random photos posted, maybe a song, or a quote. It's content that is very easy to push out there but is different than Twitter.

If you compare it to Posterous, Posterous still feels too much like a regular blogging platform, so they seem to be targeting different markets.

Usually whenever a friend tells me that they want to start a blog, I suggest opting for a Tumblr account because they are going to be more likely to stick with it and post more often because of the nature of the content that works well with it.

The 5 times I've attempted to connect to a posterous page, I've had a connection issue or something went wrong. There are technical problems with posterous and they need to get fixed. And it's slow.

Because posterous is blogger/livejournal/wordpress--, whereas tumblr is twitter++.

Can you elaborate? Both have social features - so why is posterous not twitter+?

If I can throw something out there: a posterous post has a higher expected word-count than a tumblr post. People will categorize tumblr as twitter with better media features.

The whole "blog by sending email" idea doesn't fly with me.

I tried to give posterous a shot in the past, but was disappointed. I don't exactly remember why, but it didn't strike me as something I'd want to use.

I like posterous , i use it very extensively but some of my friends think 1 . it is a programmer blog 2. Lacks of themes 3. They can not use for professional website.