With WordPress the current open-source champion among blogging platforms, it’s easy to overlook Movable Type — the “commercial” product (single use licenses are free) that powers well-known blogs like Huffington Post, GM, etc. (I recommend against Google Blogger for business blogs.)

Thought it’s hardly a secret, Movable Type 4 Beta is available for testing, and includes a handful of new features that make sense for business use, especially in the context of group blogs and “blog clusters” — areas that are going to see significant growth in blogging. (More on this trend in an upcoming post.)

Beyond the usual cheerleading, the press release offers us one intriguing glimpse:

MT4 saves users time by allowing management of many blogs and many users in a central interface. Users can install, manage and publish thousands of blogs with one installation. The Movable Type aggregator pulls multiple blogs into a single blog, while customizable roles and groups enable more effective user management. Look for more information later in the beta period about an optional functionality pack with enterprise capabilities for Movable Type.

I use WordPress; when I started playing with blogs, it was free, easy to install, and there were loads of themes and plugins available.

It still balances ease of use and power beautifully, though plenty of holes remain to be plugged.

To build an easy-to-manage cluster, I’m looking hard at WordPress MultiUser (MU), but admit to a bit of blog envy when looking at Movable Type demos.

Blogging platforms are still largely in their infancy; they handle the basics wonderfully, but there’s plenty of room for improvement, and we’re going to see a lot of that improvement over the next twelve months. Look forward to it.

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, wordpress, movable type, blog cluster