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Social Networking - Monday, December 3, 2007

Russia's SUP Media Buys LiveJournal From SixApart

In his first major decision since taking over the helm of Six Apart, CEO Chris Alden has decided to sell his company's ownership in Live Journal to Russian Internet startup SUP. The amount of the deal was not disclosed, however, he Kommersant business daily in Russia places the price-tag at around $30M.

In 2005, Alden's predecessor Barak Berkowitz had bought Live Journal from its founder Brad Fitzpatrick, who had launched LiveJournal in 1999.

While we imagine it was a tough decision, the idea here is correct. Six Apart has suffered from a lack of focus as it owns responsibility for several platforms: Vox, MovableType and Typepad. Competitors WordPress and other blog platforms have taken significant market share from Six Apart as they have added functionality at faster clip.

As of the end of October 2007, there were some 14M accounts on LiveJournal. Of those users who provided their birth-date of birth, the majority were in the 15-24 age group and of those who specified a gender, two-thirds were female.

LiveJournal is most popular in English-speaking countries and the US has by far the most LiveJournal users, however, this deal came about as there is a sizable Russian contingent. Live Journal is the largest online community on the Runet, with about 45% of all entries in the Russian blogosphere. SUP established a licensing partnership with Six Apart in October 2006, under which SUP provided support and marketing for LiveJournal users for Russian users of LiveJournal.

We hadn't come across SUP so we had to look into it. Sup, which means 'soup,' was founded in Moscow in the summer of 2006 by American born Andrew Paulson. SUP also operates Championat.ru, one of Russia's top three sports Web sites as well as the+SOL media agency, which is the advertisement operator for Russian visitors of Last.fm, some Yahoo! properties, and Times Online.

View - LiveJournal site