Yahoo Web Hosting has begun to offer Six Apart's Movable Type blogging software to small businesses and independent professionals seeking to maintain high-traffic blogs on a scalable, reliable platform, Yahoo announced yesterday. Six Apart has optimized Movable Type specifically for Yahoo's hosting environment to significantly increase speed and performance.

Yahoo will in effect become the preferred supplier of Movable Type for small businesses, and the partnership is the latest in a series of moves by Yahoo to embrace "social media," writes Reuters.

Yahoo "is going to be our recommended (sales) channel for small business," said Anil Dash, vice-president of professional products for Six Apart. Yahoo said it will offer commercial blogs based on Movable Type as part of its existing small business website management service, which it offers at about $12 a month.

One in eight U.S. online stores are hosted by Yahoo, which hosts some 30 million websites, including hundreds of thousands of small business sites, said Rich Riley, general manager of Yahoo's small business unit.