Tech Shout!

On Monday, Russian online media firm SUP acquired LiveJournal from SixApart. LiveJournal is by far Russia’s most renowned hosted blogging site and this move by SUP is surely one of the best strategic ones made by the company. The financial terms of the latest deal have not yet been revealed.

The Russian version of LiveJournal was released in October 2006, through an affiliation between the one-year-old company SUP and Six Apart.

LiveJournal includes various blog hosting services such as Blogger, which was taken over by Google in 2003; Wordpress, and another service owned by Six Apart called TypePad.

SixApart bought LiveJournal from Danga Interactive founder Brad Fitzpatrick in the year 2005. Apparently under the management of SixApart, LiveJournal’s accounts grew from the initial 5 million to 14 million.

“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,” maintained Andrew Paulson, CEO of SUP.

Chris Alden, CEO and Chairman of Six Apart said, “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.”

SUP has acquired LiveJournal, Inc., the company that holds all LiveJournal assets, from Six Apart. LiveJournal, Inc. will continue to operate out of San Francisco, California.

Meanwhile Six Apart maintained that atleast for the next 24 months; the company will continue representing LiveJournal for advertising and sponsorship.

SUP will establish an American management company, LiveJournal Inc., which will handle the social network’s operations.

SUP will also set up a LiveJournal advisory board that will include Fitzpatrick, who is now a part of Google. SUP further stated that two seats on the advisory board will be reserved for members of the “LiveJournal community.” And the seats will be awarded on the basis of open, online elections and will rotate.

In the coming future, Six Apart’s prime concern shall be its flagship products, namely Moveable Type, Vox, and TypePad. Furthermore, the company is also recruiting staff for its Typepad initiative.

In addition, it will also continue investing in open source platform technologies such as Memcached, Mogile, Perlbal and OpenID, developed by LiveJournal and now used by other sites including Craigslist and Facebook.