MT4 Beta: Off To A Great Start

A lot of bigger media sites took note of our launch of the MT4 beta, and we wanted to take a look at some of the most notable responses. The entire MT team has been ecstatic about the warm reception we’ve gotten from the blogosphere, and a lot of these press stories help explain why.

PC World, Network World, and InfoWorld all ran with the story, with a… world of praise for what we’re trying to do for business blogging:

The new version’s enhancements keep Movable Type ahead of the rudimentary blogging capabilities vendors such as IBM and Microsoft have begun putting in their collaboration platforms. “No one has anything as robust as Movable Type. Six Apart has a big head start,” said Rob Koplowitz, a Forrester Research analyst.

InfoWorld’s (MT-Powered!) blog gets in on the action, too. Steve Fox says, “Not content with being the social software of choice for everything from one-man megaphones to major corporate sites, it now wants to function as a content management system (CMS) for whole Web sites. Two years ago, this would have been laughable. Today, it may not be. Blogs are at the center of many major sites, and a basic template approach to everyday Web pages (not just ones we think of as blogs) is viable.”

Another article looking at the launch from a Serious Business perspective is CIO Magazine:

Six Apart is moving toward the enterprise, said Rob Koplowitz, an analyst with industry research firm Forrester. He cited their broad support for running MT4 on the Linux, Windows and Solaris operating systems, as well as their support for databases including MySQL, Oracle and SQL Server. “They are clearly doing the most interesting blogging stuff in the enterprise,” he said. … The move to create an open-source version of MT “could be terrific,” he said, because it could stimulate the open-source community to develop applications and extensions, while putting Six Apart’s business blogging application at the core.

There were even more mentions of the launch worth reviewing, including internetnews.com, a great overview from Reuter’s Eric Auchard and eWeek’s Stephen Bryant offering his take.

Of course, we value feedback from bloggers as much as praise from the press, and those responses have been great, too. Richard MacManus was first out of the gate with one of his typically insightful analyses over on MT-powered Read/Write Web, saying “MT4 is also pushing itself as ‘a social media platform’, which allows users to turn their audiences into communities. In effect this means that readers can become members of a website, with rights to post alongside authors - including sharing photos, videos, and audio.”

On TechCrunch, our old friend Duncan Reily offered up a pretty thorough look at the new beta, concluding, “As a vocal critic previously I can now say in all honesty that a leopard can change its spots. The new version of MovableType looks wildly appealing to me as a blogger.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick offered, “It sounds like they are taking a very smart approach; learning from best of breed related apps (many of which they also own) and developing towards where users appear to be headed.”

Perhaps one of the most satisfying groups of people that we’ve gotten positive feedback from is our Professional Network members, who rely on platforms like MT for their careers. Michael Klassen at Thinking Cap was wonderfully warm in his post:

There are lots of reasons why Thinking Cap prefers Movable Type as its preferred web publishing platform for client sites. But our main reason for liking MT is that they are committed and passionate about their core product, Movable Type. We’ve just done a brief test run of the first Movable Type 4 beta version, and we very much like the direction this software is headed.

There are many, many more responses to the announcement, of course, and a lot of the reaction so far predictably focuses on things like our MT open source project. But we’re most excited about the new capabilities we’ll be introducing for bloggers, as well as the features that should help an entirely new wave of people start blogging. Thanks to everyone for the kind words and extraordinarily positive reaction so far!