Six Apart (best known for the blogging package MovableType) has a new blogging/social networking tool called Vox. As they describe it:

Vox is a new personal blogging service. It's all about ease of use, privacy control, playing well with other web services, and staying connected to the people you care about.

• Control exactly who gets to see each of your posts and photos.
• See all the posts from your friends and family on one page.
• Bring in content from other web services you already use (Amazon, YouTube, more).

Marc Canter has written a 10 part (!) series of posts about Vox:

1. Neighborhoods = dynamic aggregation channel (I like it; where are the APIs?)
2. Hardwired interfaces = ‘gotta start somewhere’
3. New distribution channels = render RSS in Vox (So why can’t one take an RSS feed - and flow that into a Vox account?)
4. Integrated Media Galleries
5. Microcontent Publishing = something is better than nothing
6. Ease of use = using Ajax effectively
7. Hosted Experience = business model
8. Mobile
9. Community = How to get a bunch of folks to use your stuff (much of Vox’s ease of use can be attributed to this LACK of advanced features)
10. Hustling = what makes SixApart successful (Andrew Anker is all about making money.)

Canter, of course, is the man behind PeopleAggregator, the website that ... um, does stuff with social networking.

Via Infoworld:

Six Apart expects Movable Type Enterprise to offer an attractive way for companies to improve internal communications and knowledge sharing. Its low cost means the offering could replace other software tools designed to deliver similar collaboration and content-management benefits, Six Apart said.

At the low end, a license costs $4,000 with the option of an additional $2,000 yearly fee for customer support. The support fee includes product updates and a two-hour response time to questions.

The Six Apart press release lists features, of which I'll highlight the more interesting:

• LDAP authentication

• Oracle 10g database support

• Cross-blog publishing and aggregation tools

• Powerful anti-spam protection with solid feedback management tools

• Customizable email integration

The Infoworld article mentions a few other competitors in this space: iUpload and Near-Time Inc.