Six Apart jettisons LiveJournal

Six Apart announced a "new home" for LiveJournal (LJ), the blogging and social networking tools and community it acquired in January 2005. The new home is Russian-based online media company SUP.

Another way of describing what's happening with LiveJournal is that it was sold because it's not strategic to Six Apart's future. The company is focusing its efforts on Movable Type for businesses and TypePad and Vox for consumers and small business. All three products have significant competitors.

"On the Six Apart side this gives us significantly more resources to invest in our three core properties, Movable Type, TypePad, and Vox, and for LJ it means a new company that has significant resources to invest in growing it. We have ambitious plans for our products and services in 2008, and I know SUP has the same for LJ," said Six Apart CEO Chris Alden in an email.

SUP had licensed LiveJournal in October 2006, and managed the business in Russia. LiveJournal Russia represents 28 percent of the global monthly LiveJournal audience., according to the company. Only about 20 percent of registered members are in the U.S. The new LiveJournal company, based in San Francisco, will have an advisory board consisting of industry experts and members of the LiveJournal community, including Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal and who is now at Google. For the next year, Six Apart will manage sales as part of the transition.

The new LiveJournal, Inc. published a 100-day plan, focusing on usability, such as optimizing navigation and the registration process; socialization and discovery, via improved tagging, internal messaging, widgets and friend discovery and invites; and improved performance.