How absurd: Six Apart, the blog-software maker which has helped so many bloggers overturn the staid, outdated conventions of journalism and PR, has tried to use an embargo to quash news of a software upgrade until 9 p.m. tonight. Mashable published the news earlier this morning, and then yanked its story. The software in question, Movable Type Pro, is an anodyne improvement, turning MT's existing commenter features into a social network. Why this news ought to be released in a coordinated fashion is beyond me; for that matter, why it's interesting is also beyond me, since Six Apart has been trying to get into the social-network business since its ill-fated purchase of LiveJournal in 2005. News.com, admirably, has kept its post online. Here's Mashable's now-unpublished report by writer Kristen Nicole:

Automattic, Matt Mullenweg's blog-tools startup, is readying an upgrade to its WordPress software this week. Anil Dash of Six Apart took the occasion to let WordPress users know they can upgrade to his company's Movable Type instead. It's a move straight out of Oracle's handbook. But Mullenweg freaked out, calling the post "desperate and dirty." Dash responded by charging Mullenweg with "slander." Some are under the delusion that this nerdfight is about software. It's not. It's about money.

Six Apart is entering the build-your-own-social-network-that-no-one-will-care-about business with a new "community solution" for Movable Type, its popular weblog software. [Compiler]

Six Apart has, at last, released Movable Type 4.0. The best new feature in the blog-software package: You know those hopelessly annoying dweebs who leave tiresome comments on your blog? Why, now you can "promote" them to be full authors! How thrilling: more loser-generated content. A feature suggestion for Movable Type 4.1: Give readers the ability to demote them right back to commenter status. [Movabletype.com]

Movable Type, the aging blog software made by San Francisco startup Six Apart, may be set to release a new 4.0 version on Tuesday. Barely. Which is bad, considering that Movable Type is still the company's cash cow. Byrne Reese, its product manager, accidentally forwarded an internal planning memo to an outside developers' mailing list. Reese says the memo, meant to help management decide on Monday whether or not the product is ready, is "intentionally pessimistic." But it has a laundry list of unresolved bugs. And Reese admits that some of the bugs will "dramatically slow" adoption of the new version. Despite that, he thinks the company can "manage" a release. And by manage, he means spin like a top: "We will need to be on our toes in regards to communication and PR to stay ahead of the curve with people who will say that we rushed the release." Here's a radical notion, for a blog-software company that claims to be about transparency: Why not just admit you did, in fact, rush the release? The full memo, after the jump: