Six Apart has announced Movable Type 4, now in beta. The new version of the popular blogging platform addresses some of the issues that have led to many MT users switching to the open-source WordPress platform.

The company is also releasing an open-source version of Movable Type to help compete with WordPress. WordPress use has exploded in the last two years, along with the number of plug-ins available on the platform. By releasing an open-source Movable Type, the platform is more likely to stay on a par with WordPress.

Here’s their release info on the update:

Easy to set-up and use

You’ll be up and running in minutes with MT4’s easy set up. Once it’s installed, you’ll be prompted to select from dozens of new professionally designed default templates and themes, or to import blog content directly from another blog platform.

Enjoy all the power of rich media

MT4’s core authoring functions allows you to manage assets with greater ease. A rich web editor offers “What You See Is What You Get” functionality to allow insertion of not just text, but audio, photos, and files as well. And you can easily reuse any of those rich media assets with MT4’s new built-in asset management system.

Get a view of your blog’s success with the MT4 dashboard

Movable Type 4 offers a powerful summary of your blogging activity via a convenient single screen. Dynamic graphic displays let you see what’s happening with your blogs, which content and which contributors are driving conversations, and provides smart starting points for you to manage your site.
Create a dynamic website with powerful content management

Dynamic Websites With Powerful Content Management

MT4’s powerful templating system lets you output content in any format, without requiring any programming or scripting. You can create standalone pages that automatically inherit the design and layout of your blog, and publish any content with the new posting interface, including rich media.
Let your readers join the conversation

Let Readers Join The Conversation

MT4 now offers a powerful built-in registration system, letting you use your own authentication for commenter’s and users – giving you greater control over who posts what. It’s easy to integrate authentication with other platforms and services through OpenID, the industry-standard single sign-on system pioneered by Six Apart and currently deployed for over 100 million sites.
View multiple blogs on one website, with easy archiving

View Multiple Blogs On One Site

With the MT aggregator, you can now easily pull posts from some or all of your blogs into one page for easy viewing. You can present those blogs in even more ways, with expanded options for archiving content by date, organizing content by category or tag, and archiving blog content by author.

More discussion here.