If your goal is casual blogging with a reasonable amount of control over a simple blog I would suggest Blogger. If you expect to get a lot of traffic and want to have complete and total control over your blog, I'd suggest paying for a hosting account and using a Wordpress implementation. If your blog will be controversial or have anything that might offend visitors, definitely find a paid hosting service as any of the free ones will shut you down or make it more difficult for people to access your site.

Here's Why I suggest Blogger:

ANYONE can figure out how to use it:
Built in templates let you choose a pre-built blog and all you have to do is plug in the text to get started.

Integration with Google Services:
If you already have a Google or GMAIL account, you can use that same log in to create and manager your Blogger based blog. You can use that same ID when commenting on other Blogger blogs. You can use a Google OpenId to interact with your blog too. The more heavily you use Google services, the more handy this integration becomes.

Convenient Built in Tools:
AdSense, syndication settings, commenting, ability to post blog updates by emailing them to a secret address, ability to blog from your mobile phone, privacy controls and more are all super easy to use.

Supports Advanced Levels of Customization:
If you know what you are doing and are comfortable with CSS, you can create a template from scratch and still use it with blogger. If you like to learn as you go you can heavily customize a basic template over time and let you blog slowly evolve into something fancier.

A Hint of Social Networking:
You can use your google account to "follow" and be "followed" by other bloggers. For example, if you follow my blog and Bob visits your profile, Bob will see that you follow me and might click on my blog giving me a new visitor. You can also easily assign other google accounts as "contributors" and grant them limited access to add things to your blog if you'd like to make it into a collaborative project.

Optional Blogger Toolbar at the top of your blog:
Normally I would hate some else's branding on my site. However, this thing actually helps get you traffic and adds convenient search functionality so people can find things on your site. The "Next Blog" button jumps you to a random blog, which means it's always possible that visitors of other blogs will jump to your site. I had originally planned to remove this from my blog, but I get a fair number of visitors from this tool so I decided to keep it since blog readers apparently like it. It's small enough as to not intrude significantly on your blog.

I have enough skills and access to web hosting that I could make more or less any kind of blog I, but since my blog is for light casual use I didn't want to put that much effort into it. I chose blogger because it was easy and had enough features to keep me happy.

WordPress templates tend to look prettier and their service comes with some of the above features, but their free service doesn't offer this entire convenient package.

Wordpress is okay and easy to maintain. The admin side looks user-friendly enough even for those who aren't really techie. You can also download free themes online.

You can try Blogger too. I'm a Blogger user for about a year now and I haven't encounter any problems with it yet. You can download lots of themes online and even create your own page design if you want to. You don't have to install modules for the side bars too if you are customizing your page. You just have to choose then click save to add it on your page.

So there, if you really want an easy to maintain type of blog, go for either Wordpress or Blogger. Another good thing about the two is they are ad-free compared to Facebook and Myspace and even Multiply. If you want to earn a little, you can add some advertisements there.

I've used both Wordpress and blogger - I personally prefer Blogger for the ease, but wordpress blogs tend to look more professional but you might need some additional knowledge with hosting and coding to make your wordpress look the way you wish.

My vote will be go to blogger. Because I also used wordpress but like most blogger because it will give you simple layout. And easy to control this layout.

Blogger is free but you can make your blog monetize easily by using google adsense.

When you will post and any new message no need any additional knowledge just write this article, give a title and post.

Follower option of blogger is so good. So that anyone can follow your account. You also can invite your friends.

You also will get rss feed option here...

Blogger will give you a large amount disk space and bandwidth so you never have to delete your any post.

If you use blogger you will get a good support from google search and google.

There is also a good option that next blog by this option you also can get some traffic.

Themes of blogger are really petty cool. I like it.

But I will not say that wordpress is bad, they also good but if you want to make a simple blog and no need of any commercial uses, as a little beginner web developer, I will suggest you "blogger"

Here is my one of the cool blogger blog. You can view my blog ..here is itupcoming movies

I am using it for commercial blog but now still it is under developing....
I will work in this blog after this month.

I think Blogger is best for free option. It can be made professional using some custom templates and domains and secondly it is quite easy to maintain and use and even change the template.

If you are looking for a lot of features then wordpress gives you a lot of functionality with its plugins.

For a newbie blogger is a better option.

I'd go with Squarespace. It costs a few dollars a month for the blog software and hosting, but you get what you pay for. They have the best platform in the business, which is completely customizable to whatever you want. You can create basically anything you want, mostly with pre-made tools that are really easy to use. If you're techy you can get into the CSS and make anything you can imagine. They let you import and export from any other blog, and you can get 2 weeks free to try it out.

http://www.squarespace.com

I have a few blogs. 2 are Blogger blogs and one is Word Press.

I like Blogger because it is easy to use and you can add Google AdSense to it which if you get a lot of traffic could be money in your pocket.

I'm not sure if Word Press has the option to put affliate links or paying ads. I use my word press blog in conjunction with my official author website. So there is no money associated with my word press blog.