There is an interesting article by the Business Insider about why Tumblr is beating Posterous at the micro-blogging game. Their main argument is that Tumblr is designed and Posterous is engineered. I have used both services and I would agree with that statement. Tumblr is a beautiful product and would recommend it to anyone who wants to quickly get a blog started.

However, I'm a Posterous user and I love the service. I use it because it is an engineered product and it has the features that I want. Their post by email feature is great. I enjoy working on the posts in Gmail and then posting to my website them by emailing it. I use the service to host my personal blog (markkoberlein.com) and then I pull the posts into the Koberlein Studios Blog through their easy to use API.

There are some features that Tumblr has that I wish Posterous would add. They have a great iPhone app, better templates, and better editing tools. I don't need any of these features but they are the features that make the product more usable for the general user. This is why Tumblr is beating Posterous by attracting more new users.

No matter how well a product is engineered, if it's not designed for the everyday user it will lose in the long run.