Blog network

I've searched around, but haven't been able to answer this question myself, so if this has been covered before please point me in the right direction and forgive me for this post.

What I'm looking for is the ability to create a site where users are able to register and host their own blog. I've looked at wordpress mu, but I think for management and control Drupal may be better or I may be wrong.

How I picture it: John Doe creates an account with the user name jdoe at www.domain.com. Once his account is created (with the email verification feature) he's able to login and is automatically taken to www.domain.com/jdoe where he can post to his blog and upload content to his blog. I don't want other users to be able to edit another users blog or for a user to create users for their blog--just a single user blog. The idea is pretty simple and nothing new, but I'm not sure how to go about this.

Do I need to use a multisite drupal install? Which modules would I use? Is Drupal the right platform? I would plan to add additional features, such as showing recent posts and users on the main (www.domain.com) page, which is why I thought Drupal would be better than wordpress mu.

Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated. I am fairly savvy when it comes to databases and web, so this is something I plan on doing myself (although I don't have much experience in php coding), but if there are any drupal gurus who would be willing to offer their services to create this I would be willing to pay.

Thanks in advance!