LiveJournal Purchased by Russian Company, SUP

Blogging software company, Six Apart, announced this morning, that its leading social networking and blogging community, LiveJournal, had been acquired by Russian firm, SUP. The two companies first teamed up in October 2006, when SUP signed a licensing agreement to manage the Russian LiveJournal community, which has since grown in popularity to become second to the US in terms of accounts set up through the service.

"We bring a passion, a deep respect for LiveJournal members, and a plan to invest in improvements to LiveJournal globally," said Andrew Paulson, CEO of SUP, in a press release issued this morning. "We are excited to extend the past year's momentum in Russia to the rest of the world, and we think that current LiveJournal members will see positive changes in short order."







SUP has set up LiveJournal, Inc., an American company which will manage and operate the blogging service internationally. Six Apart has announced plans to continue dealing with advertisers and sponsors on behalf of LiveJournal for at least the next 12 months.

"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 Six Apart CEO and chairman, Chris Alden.

Six Apart acquired LiveJournal in January 2005, and has since nearly tripled the number of accounts with the service, from 5 million to 14 million.