Today, we're releasing the latest update to Movable Type, version 4.2, and along with it we're announcing the launch of Movable Type Pro, a profoundly powerful new set of capabilities that shows the web where blogging is going next.

So, what's new in this release?

• Movable Type Pro lets you turn any site into a full social publishing platform, combining all of Movable Type's abilities as a blogging and CMS with social networking features like profiles, ratings, user registration, forums, following, and more.
• The platform upgrade to Movable Type 4.2 fulfills the top three requests made by our community -- it's up to 100 times faster for common tasks, features much simpler templates for customizing your site, and includes 100% free and open source TypePad AntiSpam for keeping junk comments off your site.
• Movable Type Pro includes all of the features in the Movable Type Community Solution and more, giving you all the power of this enormously successful social networking platform. And if you're a personal blogger or have a current MT license, Movable Type Pro is a free update.
• Movable Type remains the most secure publishing platform of its kind. As part of developing these new versions, we completed the most intensive proactive search for security issues in the history of the platform.

First, we set publishing free. Next up, social networks.

These announcements are a milestone for the entire Movable Type community, but they represent a vision that we've been building for years. Almost seven years ago, when Movable Type was first being created, the power of publishing on the web was still largely in the hands of a few giant media companies. In the years since, thanks in no small part to the community of bloggers who got started with Movable Type, that power has been unleashed, making it possible for anyone to publish with all the professionalism and presence of a giant media corporation by using easy-to-use, open tools.

Today, we're bringing the same idea to social networking. Providing social features to your community doesn't mean you have to give up control of your community to a giant media entity. Managing a community online is something you can do yourself, using easy-to-use, open tools.

Enough theory -- here's the features in MT Pro:

• Everyone's invited. You can easily add full-featured forums, community blogs and group blogs to your site, and since Movable Type has always managed an unlimited number of blogs in one interface, you can keep track of all those conversations using a single set of tools.
• Membership. It's easy to allow anyone on the web to register on your site, or to sign in with MT's industry-leading OpenID support. Once they're in, your site's members get full-fledged customizable profiles, personalized user pictures (avatars), and can follow their friends or other site members they're interested in.
• Call it "UGC", if you must. Any member of your community can, with appropriate permissions, submit content for publishing on your site. Administrators have full ability to review submissions, and submitted posts show up on user profiles right next to their comments and other activity. Whether you call it "user-generated content" or just "a good idea", it's built right in.
• Ratings and Recommendations. Any registered user on your site can vote for content they like, making it easy to create "most popular" or "most recommended" lists on your site. You can even create your own voting communities within your site -- think "Digg in a box".

And all of those features are on top of the amazing new powers of MT 4.2:

• It's fast. MT's smart caching only publishes the parts of the page that change, and the core engine's been radically revamped to make it more efficient. The result? Using your current templates, publishing can be two to three times faster, right out of the box. Some testers have seen results with publishing up to ten times as fast or more.
• Templates are super simple. MT has always been designed so you don't need a ton of plugins to do fancy things with your site's design. But with all that power, our community told us that we also needed to make sure templates were still easy to understand. So in MT 4.2, templates are vastly simplified, and easier than ever to customize. And live template previews even let you see design changes before they're published on your site.
• 100% Free AntiSpam. TypePad AntiSpam is the best comment spam prevention service on the web. And it's 100% free no matter how many comments you get, plus it's open source and Akismet API compatible so it's easy to hook up to your site. With MT 4.2, it's also built right in to Movable Type.
• Even better APIs. OpenID suppport, OAuth libraries, and the ability to add in plugins to connect with the iPhone, Action Streams and more are all built right in. And all of your MT4 plugins should keep working just fine with this update, or have been updated to work even better in 4.2.
• Plus all the power of MT4. A powerful built-in asset management system. Integrated widget management. The smartest template editor around. The ability, as always, to manage an unlimited number of blogs and authors all in one place. Industry-leading support for new technologies and features. And an absolutely unparalleled community of passionate developers, designers, bloggers, and experts.

Savannah, Georgia-based website design and development firm Heideldesign uses Movable Type to create award-winning sites for a diverse client base.

Find out more in the Heideldesign Case Study.

Provocative fashion designer Kenneth Cole uses Movable Type to foster social awareness and cultivate spirited conversations on the AWEARNESS Blog.

Find out more in the new AWEARNESS Blog Case Study.

We've been championing blogging in the enterprise for years, so we are thrilled to note that one of the biggest and most respected enterprises in the world is blogging on Movable Type.

Blogs.Oracle.Com (BOC) is managed by the Oracle Technical Network and consists of hundreds of blogs authored by both employees and Oracle partners. Technologists, scientists, marketing professionals, and groups all maintain Movable Type blogs that aggregate up to Blogs.Oracle.Com, and the result is a rich view into the diversity and vitality of the company and its ecosystem.

The technology underlying BOC was developed by Oracle Asia Research and Development Center, a group located in the Asia Pacific that is tasked with creating innovative solutions based on Oracle technology. They chose to implement the Movable Type platform atop Oracle's Content Database to create a scalable network of hundreds of blogs.

Blogs.Oracle.Com is a space where collaboration, communication and knowledge sharing can take place across the enterprise and with partners and customers. Both internal and external blogs enable Oracle teams to interact with each other, vendors and customers quickly and efficiently.

Prior to implementing Movable Type, the company had been using a platform that did not provide RSS capabilities, entry tagging, or the ability to post different types media. Now, as one Oracle blogger writes, "we are finally catching up." And catching up they are - Oracle bloggers are already off to a great start, creating content and developing a dialogue around many key business areas.

Among the blogs on the BOC are a Social CRM blog, the Oracle Open World Blog, and the OTN Tech Blog written by head of the Oracle Technical Network Justin Kestelyn.

Blogging within and without the enterprise - especially on the scale of Blogs.Oracle.Com - is a tremendous show of confidence for this medium, and we look forward to watching Oracle use the Movable Type platform to connect and communicate more powerfully than ever before.

New-York based brand management firm Electric Artists uses Movable Type to create cutting-edge sites for brands like Kenneth Cole and Starwood Hotels.

Find out more in the Electric Artists Case Study.

Kevin Cornell describes himself as a writer of excruciatingly banal prose with an inferiority complex, but don't let that stop you from checking out his blog. Clever, droll and only occasionally serious, this talented illustrator has created a cheeky site populated with characters that include a sock monkey named Mojo, a turtle-man and a temperamental pot-bellied stove.

Would you expect anything less from the man who named his blog Bearskinrug?

In 2002, Kevin Cornell was a graphic designer working mainly in Flash. Encouraged by friend and fellow designer Jason Santa Maria, he created the first iteration of his blog in Movable Type 2. "I wanted to interact with people," he explains. "And I wanted something that would make it easy for me to write and publish online."

He also had another nascent goal: to begin drawing again. After years of working in digital animation, Kevin had a yen to dust off his pencils. "If I had set out to create a big website, I never would have done it," he says today. "But because I could take small steps, and upload illustrations as I created them, I was able to start drawing again and get feedback."

He continually revised the design of Bearskinrug as he upgraded to newer versions of Movable Type; in true designer form, he chronicles the evolution of his designs in a gallery on his blog, where he has also showcases his drawings and other work.

But Bearskinrug is far more than just a portfolio site; Kevin has proven to be an adept comic with a droll writing style that has attracted a loyal following from all over the world.

Perhaps it has something to do with his comment form, which encourages readers to leave a "witty bon-mot or clever repartee," but Kevin's readers are in on the game. "There's a genuine sense of fun on my site," he says. "My readers are smart and clever, and I've rarely had to delete a comment."

Not only has Bearskinrug become a valuable forum for interaction and inspiration, but Kevin's decision to create a blog also paved the way for a new career path. "I probably wouldn't be an illustrator today if I didn't have a blog," he says thoughtfully.

Today, Kevin's work as a freelance illustrator spans a broad range of projects, from graphic novels to editorial pieces to storyboarding for films. "My blog is the only marketing tool I use," he explains. "I don't know of any other way of marketing that would be more effective."

Most gratifying even than pursuing a career he loves is the sense of having built something special: "I've created this large archive of drawings and articles that I'm proud I made instead of letting them sit in my head," Kevin says.

If that isn't one of the finest justifications we've ever heard for blogging, we don't know what is.

See how 20x200, an ecommerce site built entirely in Movable Type, sold over 14,000 limited-edition art prints during the first year after the site launched.

Find out more in the 20x200 Case Study.

The riddle of how to increase search engine rankings is one of the hottest topics in business today. A high Google ranking almost certainly leads to greater visibility and increased revenue, and the secret of SEO has become the holy grail.

As search traffic continues to expand, web design and development firms are scrambling to integrate SEO-friendly practices into their offerings. For web development firm Portent Interactive, the topic isn't new at all; for the past 13 years, improving search engine metrics has been central to the value they bring their customers. Known for their deep SEO knowledge, this Seattle-based firm is often tasked with helping clients improve search engine rankings.

For some of those clients, the answer is to build a website in Movable Type. "From an SEO perspective, publishing and updating often is key to increasing search engine rankings," says Ian Lurie, principal of Portent Interactive. "Because Movable Type makes it so simple to publish and update web content, it has become a valuable tool that we use to help our customers reach their SEO objectives."

Lurie describes Portent Interactive as an Internet marketing agency, where clients not only come for nuts and bolts development but also for strategic help in creating a strong online presence. From building online e-commerce sites to creating internet marketing strategies for small- and medium-sized businesses, the 29-person team at Portent uses a comprehensive approach to help clients succeed.

No matter the project, one objective remains the same: creating sites that are easy to update. "Movable Type is easy for our clients to get their heads around," Ian says. "It doesn't have a lot of extra features that they don't want. We show them how to log in and use all the basic functions so that they can quickly publish and manage content." Using Movable Type's Pages functionality, Portent builds websites that are customized to each client's needs - some of which include a blog as part of the site, and some of which do not.

For Groomstand, a site that provides high-quality gifts for groomsmen, Portent Interactive used the Movable Type asset manager to enable the company to manage a wide variety of products and images and publish a wide variety of content.

For business consultant Fred Janssen and business development coach Lenora Edwards, Portent designed sleek, professional sites in Movable Type that enabled these independent professionals to reach a broader audience.

Portent Interactive uses their own website as a showcase of how a custom site can be built on Movable Type. Various staff members regularly post on the firm's blog, providing valuable search engine tips, content management strategies and much more. Ian Lurie's book Conversation Marketing provides yet another layer of insight to potential clients, and cements Ian's position as a guiding voice in the marketing dialogue of the Web 2.0 community.

Inside the firm, Portent's developers find that MT simplifies their own internal processes: "Movable Type allows us to implement multiple sites with a single install on our server," Ian reports.  "And that makes us more efficient."

Most importantly, "Movable Type allows us to say 'yes' more often," Ian says. "We combine our SEO knowledge with tools like Movable Type to enable our clients to gain visibility and stand out from the competition."