LiveJournal Sold to Russian Media Firm

The Russian company already responsible for managing LiveJournal.ru has purchased the entire LiveJournal empire.

In yet another changing hands of popular Web 2.0 properties, the blogging site LiveJournal has recently been sold by current owners Six Apart to SUP, a Russian company. The company had already licensed the LiveJournal.ru domain name last year to manage LiveJournal in Russia, and Russian accounts have to come represent 28 percent of LiveJournal traffic.

Six Apart CEO Chris Alden was pleased with the progress SUP had made since taking over LiveJournal’s Russian half. “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,” he said. SUP has created a U.S. entity, LiveJournal Inc., to manage the existing American site, and intends to create a user advisory board to keep in touch with the demands of existing users.

Financial details of the LiveJournal sale were undisclosed. Six Apart originally purchased LiveJournal from its founder and current Google employee Brad Fitzpatrick in January 2005, and managed to grow its user base from 5.6 million to an existing base of over 14 million.