Prelude to Another Acquisition?

Here's a piece from CNet saying that Yahoo! and blogging software provider Six Apart are today launching a product that allows Yahoo! small business customers/users the ability to create blogs on Six Apart's Movable Type software and then have them hosted by Yahoo! for $11.95 per month.

Yahoo!'s 360 publishing platform appears to be having limited success (correct me if I'm wrong). At least in contrast to Google's Blogger it's enjoyed only limited success (Blogger is free).

Yahoo!'s 360 is a blogging platform but also a way for the company to collect user-generated content and push it out to various points in its network. Conceptually, it's a brilliant strategy. But it may not be working well or fast enough for Yahoo! (Although this deal is aimed at small businesses, I suspect there is a consumer side to this.)

Evidence of the company's' impatience may be its very recent acquisition of social search/bookmarking site del.icio.us. Yahoo! has a very similar service in MyWeb (which I use and love). But there was considerable speculation that what Yahoo! was after was not necessarily the technology or functionality but the 300,000 loyal del.icio.us users and possibly the brand.

Blogging is by the day becoming more mainstream and more and more an important source of content. Yahoo! has been on an acquisition tear lately, adding what it perceives to be strategic assets.

So, I'm wondering whether this relationship then is a test drive for something else in the not-too-distant future. Hmm …