I’ve gone back and forth on whether to use Posterous, or Tumblr for my personal blogging platform.  As previously blogged about, Tumblr has some accessibility issues, especially with its embedded Flash audio/video player.  I’ve attempted to get Tumblr to resolve the issue, but to no avail.  Fortunately, I’ve sort of found a  work-around whereby if audio files are not hosted directly on Tumblr, they can be linked into a post and Tumblr won’t force the use of their inaccessible Flash player.

Why Tumblr?

When choosing a blogging platform, a lot in the end comes down to personal preference.  I like the fact that without any real work on my part, Tumblr cross-posts to Twitter and Facebook.  I also like the fact that numerous themes exist and that I, as a CSS neophyte, have the ability to design my own theme.

Why Posterous?

Posterous is attractive simply because it’s dead simple to use.  Simply sending a blank Email will cause a new blog to be created and posting/comment moderation is all carried out via Email.  Audio, if Emailed as an attachment, is easily downloadable via a generated download link and far as I can tell, everything is just accessible.  Like Tumblr, Posterous can cross-post to Twitter and Facebook although only the post title is tweeted VS Tumblr which attempts to squeeze as much of the body as is possible into 140 characters.  Unfortunately, a user doesn’t really have much control over the way Posterous formats posts and in deed, theme creation leaves quite a bit to be desired, at least for someone like me.

Moving forward

After much consideration and after having used both services for a while, I think I’m going to stick with Tumblr for blogging.  sure I’ll have to host my audio posts somewhere else, but now that Posterous can actually submit to Tumblr, this has been made much easier.  I also think we, as a community need to keep on Tumblr about its accessibility issues.  I’m pretty sure Tumblr has a GetSatisfaction community in which case I’ll start a thread on the inaccessibility of their Flash-based player.  Hopefully, if others contribute to that thread, Tumblr will recognize that their player *does* pose a significant accessibility barrier.

For now, despite what I said in a previous post, I’m sticking with Tumblr, at least for 98% of my personal blogging.