I've been helping a good friend of mind decide which blog tool to use to promote his job hunting efforts and resumes.  Mind you, this friend is in the legal field, not technology, so what I might think is a good tool, he might not - for different reasons.  I sometimes forget that different factors have different weights in decision making.
 
So far, the products he's considered are:

1. GoDaddy
2. Serendipity
3. WordPress

My friend puts high emphasis on the ability to add and edit content using a text editor interface as similar as possible to Microsoft Word.  Hmm, herein lies the deficit.  I've used several blog products and none of them have an extensive built-in text editor interface. Thus, I've included that you have to know HTML to optimize the site layout.  Non-technical users prefer to copy and paste, which for the most part you can do this across all blog tools.  However, the end result may or may not be what you anticipate.

My friend sent me an e-mail with a message line stating "Serendipity sucks".  He said this because he found it difficult to format the text to his liking.  Then he experimented with GoDaddy, which he liked better but couldn't find a way to change the text color using the built-in icons.  Guess what, I don't see the icons either.  But I know MySpace blogs have a text color icon.

I told my friend that WordPress is considered by the Craiglist users to by the blog tool of choice.  I also mentioned that it has over 800 templates.  And the one functionality WordPress has over most other blog products is that it can be used as both a website and a blog, if you choose right template or know how to customize it to this level. 

My friend finds WordPress a little difficult to use, but this is par for the course. That's the reason a lot of people hire WordPress developers, which I have become.

The blog tools I've used include:

1. GoDaddy
2. MySpace
3. Nucleus
4. Plog
5. Serendipity
6. Typepad
7. WordPress

Caveat #1:  I am technically inclined and can workaround a poor interface by going right to the source code which is typically PHP or HTML.  Based on this, I would choose WordPress or Serendipity because both products can be used as a website or blog simultaneously.  I give a higher ranking to WordPress because it has so many templates.

Caveat #2:  If you aren't technically inclined and have no desire to learn HTML, Typepad, MySpace and GoDaddy are good choices.  Of the three, I would give higher ranking to Typepad, although I personally use GoDaddy.

Stay tuned to find out why.