The Social Age of Blogging: Movable Type Pro Launches with Social Networking Features
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I have used Movable Type and I must admit I am not their biggest fan. However, I have always given it to them for having pioneered the open source blogging systems, I sort of have a job because of that. 
And much like the early part of this decade MT has come up with the direction for blogging platforms to move ahead. Yesterday the MT blog announced the launch of Movable Type 4.2 and Movable Type Pro. While ver. 4.2 claims to have cured MT’s chronic slowness and offers easier customization it is the Pro that really means some serious business.
It brings 3 of the current main drivers of the web publishing business on one system. MT Pro integrates blogging, content management and social networking together to come up with the most complete publishing platform.
Some of the features that Movable Type Pro brings to the table are:
- full-featured forums, community blogs and group blogs
- customizable profiles, personalized user pictures (avatars), and add friend feature for members ( Open ID support)
- Content submission, review submissions, and the submitted posts show up on user profiles next to their activities …(hmm WATConnect..)
- Ratings and Recommendations – powerful enough to create a voting community within the blog
Another crazy news they shared said,
“Starting today the Movable Type Pro Blogger License is available for free to anyone and everyone not running an official business. With this license, users can have:
- unlimited blogs
- unlimited authors
- unlimited community members
- unlimited everything
That’s right, the Blogger license does not impose any caps upon its use and is free of the greatest barrier of all: cost.”
I am really liking MT right now, though I feel guilty of waxing its eloquent on a Wordpress powered blog.
The guys at Automatic, who make Wordpress have been trying to build a separate platform with Buddypress since quite a bit now, and with relatively similar features expected MT has clearly outdone them on this. I was looking forward to Buddypress since the time I came to know about it a good 6 months back, and had lined up a few personal projects to test it. And honestly I am tempted to go to MT.
However, it might be a bit early to judge because of a couple of not so enjoyable experience I have had with Movable Type. And to be honest, I am not too sure about the MT community.. the open source mavens of Wordpress who make the most mind blowing plugins and themes have my vote of confidence and perhaps that can be the deciding factor for many.
However, more importantly by launching the Pro, Six Apart has gone one up on Automatic. This surely is going to be another community showdown, which I expect will make both platforms a lot more powerful. When two quality companies go to war, the users get much better products.
All said and done, I am very excited to now these new developments at MT for this very reason. And no matter how bad or good the system actually turns out to be, just the whole set of features they have brought out is enough to give MT 4.2 and Pro a double thumbs up. This certainly sets the game up for more such developments and hence more powerful systems for us publishers. The uber-social age of blogging is upon us (uber considering blogging already is social…).
Also, there are quite a few features especially that of ver. 4.2 that I haven’t discussed here, for they are much better explained here. Do check them out and if there are any MT users among our readers then we would definitely like to hear what you have to say about Movable Type.
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