Moscow-based international media company Sup has acquired LiveJournal, an online community with a monthly audience of approximately 18 million visitors, from publishing software provider Six Apart.
Sup has also launched a company LiveJournal, which is headquartered in San Francisco, to manage and operate LiveJournal.
In October 2006, Sup concluded a licensing agreement with Six Apart to support and develop the Russian segment of LiveJournal, which now represents 28% of its monthly audience. The company claims that in the past twelve months, the community has almost doubled.
As part of the agreement, the team at Six Apart that worked on LiveJournal has moved to the new company. Sup said that it is planning to recruit new general manager, marketing and sales teams for the company.
The new company has announced the formation of the LiveJournal advisory board, which will be comprised of industry experts and members of the LiveJournal community. LiveJournal’s founder Brad Fitzpatrick will be one of the members of the board, while other positions will be reserved for two members of the LiveJournal community on a rotating basis via an open online election process.
In a similar move, social networking site MoiKrug.ru, which translates to ‘my circle’ in English, was acquired by Russian web portal Yandex in May 2007.
Source: ComputerWire daily updates
