[Infowarrior] - LiveJournal bought by Russian firm

[Richard Forno]

LiveJournal & SUP
Six Apart Announces New Home for LiveJournal

http://news.livejournal.com/104520.html

Acquisition of LiveJournal, creation of new operating company and investment
fund by SUP promise new innovation and expansion for pioneering online
community

San Francisco, CA - December 3, 2007 - Six Apart, the world's leading
independent blogging software and services company, today announced that
SUP, an international media company, has acquired LiveJournal (LJ), the
pioneer of social networking communities online used by millions of people
around the world to connect through personal journals and topic-based
communities. SUP has launched an American company, LiveJournal, Inc., to
manage and operate LiveJournal globally.

This agreement builds on the established and successful relationship between
Six Apart and SUP, which entered into a licensing agreement in October 2006
permitting SUP to manage LiveJournal in Russia. The Russian LiveJournal
community is second only to the U.S. in number of accounts, and has been
influential enough in that country to make "LiveJournal" synonymous with
"blogging" in Russian.

"We have a tremendous respect for the LiveJournal community, and are pleased
to see that LiveJournal, Inc. will continue to build on LiveJournal's rich
user experience. We have been impressed by the expertise and enthusiasm that
SUP has brought to LiveJournal in Russia. They've introduced new features,
nearly doubled the number of users, invested in key product enhancements,
and have done justice to one of the most innovative online social networks
in the world. Judging both by SUP's track record and their eagerness to
create a new user advisory board to oversee the community's interests, this
is clearly a good fit," stated Chris Alden, CEO and Chairman of Six Apart.

"Having gotten to know LiveJournal in Russia over the past year, we see
enormous potential in developing the business worldwide; it has already
shown its durability in America. We believe this is a great opportunity,"
said Andrew Paulson, CEO of SUP.

Six Apart acquired LiveJournal in January 2005 from its founder, Brad
Fitzpatrick. From its founding, LiveJournal popularized many of the
fundamental innovations of social media, such as friends lists and powerful
privacy controls. Under Six Apart, the number of LiveJournal accounts nearly
tripled from 5 million to over 14 million, and dozens of new features were
introduced to the site, including

    * a powerful email/IM/web notification system;
    * LJTalk, a completely open-source Jabber-based instant messaging
platform;
    * user-to-user messaging and tremendous improvements in comment
management and editing;
    * a vastly expanded mobile feature set, including a dedicated mobile
client; and
    * dozens of new visual themes and a completely new, simplified site
design and navigation system.

Six Apart will continue its active investment in and promotion of the
signature open source platform technologies created by the LiveJournal team,
such as Memcached, Mogile, Perlbal, and OpenID, all of which have been
adopted by other leading web properties from Craigslist to Facebook to
Wikipedia. LiveJournal, Inc. will also carry on LiveJournal's strong open
source tradition.

Six Apart will also continue to represent LiveJournal to advertisers and
sponsors for at least the coming twelve months. Brand owners interested in
advertising on LiveJournal or Six Apart's Vox may visit here.

"While we'll miss being LiveJournal's home, this is a great milestone for
LiveJournal and also lets us to focus on the core products invented at Six
Apart: Movable Type, TypePad, and Vox," said Alden. "We are investing
heavily in the products and have substantial growth plans for 2008."

For more information about the acquisition, please visit lj_2008.

About Six Apart
Six Apart Ltd. provides award-winning blogging software and services that
change the way millions of individuals, organizations, and corporations
connect and communicate across the world every day. Founded in 2002 by
husband and wife team Ben Trott and Mena G. Trott, Six Apart is a global
company with its headquarters in San Francisco, CA, and offices in Europe
and Japan. The company continues to lead in the blogging and social media
industry with the Movable Type Publishing Platform, the TypePad hosted
blogging service, and Vox, a free blogging service for friends and families.
For more information visit the Six Apart corporate web site at
http://www.sixapart.com/.

< -- BIG CUT -- >

http://news.livejournal.com/104520.html