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The Magazine Publishers of America was established in 1919 and is the leading industry association for magazine publishers. However, it's just announced a curious name change. It will still be known by the acronym MPA, but is officially dropping two of the words from that acronym: "publishers" and "America." Henceforth, the trade group will be known (rather illogically) as "MPA - The Association of Magazine Media." The reason? "Magazine media content engages consumers globally across multiple platforms, including websites, tablets, smartphones, books, live events and more."

In other news, last week blog publishing software company Six Apart was acquired and is being folded into a new social media advertising company called SAY Media. The world of media is changing. These days, 'publishing' content is merely the first step for a media business.

While startup companies are often asked about their monetization and member strategies, it's rare that they're asked how they plan on changing the world. At today's Supernova Conference in San Francisco, speakers attacked the subject of social chance and how it applies to business models, technological expertise and mass distribution.

In 2003, blogging software powerhouse Six Apart launched TypePad, a Movable Type-based hosted-blog service aimed at less tech-savvy users.

Today, the company has announced TypePad Developer Program, a resource that will give developers access to the TypePad API and back end while running their sites on their own web servers. Six Apart is simultaneously launching TypePad Motion, a microblogging service built from the Pownce code base. Six Apart acquired Pownce from founders Kevin Rose (also founder of Digg), Leah Culver, and Daniel Burka in December 2008.

San Francisco based social networking and blogging company Six Apart announced today at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic that it is introducing plugins that will work on rival Wordpress sites and other blogging platforms.

In December, Movable Type announced a new product called "Motion," which integrates activity streams, microblogging, and portable identities into a software package that can be installed into the company's hosted publishing platform, Movable Type Pro. Now, after much testing and feedback, Motion for Movable Type has become publicly available. With this software, built on open standards, blogs can add social activity streams to their site. These are similar in appearance to those from the social web aggregation service FriendFeed, but are entirely within the blog owner's control. Motion also adds a social networking element to online communities with its user profiles and authentication tools that permit signing in from any provider, including Google, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, or OpenID.

San Francisco-based blogging startup Six Apart has announced they will be giving away free accounts on their TypePad blogging system for professional bloggers and journalists who recently lost their jobs as well as those who fear the axe is coming. Cleverly dubbed the "Journalist Bailout Program," the service includes one free blog, a place in the Six Apart Media advertising program, promotion on Blogs.com, a as well as other tools and advice on driving traffic to your site, all courtesy of Six Apart.