SUP, a Russian media company, has bought online blog community site LiveJournal from San Francisco blog company Six Apart.
LiveJournal claims to have more than 18 million unique visitors per month, worldwide, with 28 percent coming from Russia. Six Apart previously cut a deal with SUP in 2006, where SUP was allowed to manage LiveJournal in Russia.
The links between Russia and Silicon Valley are growing, along with Russia’s economy. We’ve recently covered the increasing number of venture capitalists investing in Russia, hoping to fund the country’s well-trained technical workforce in building high-tech companies.
However, there are political issues. Critics slammed SixApart in 2006 for ceding control to SUP over LiveJournal in Russia. LiveJournal had by then become a main venue for free speech in Russia. SUP, as this International Herald Tribute article details, has deep connections to the Russian government. The Russian government, in turn, is regularly accused of pressuring media outlets to provide it with favorable coverage.
As part of this latest deal, SUP has sought to address such criticism through the creation of an outside advisory board that will include LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick founded LiveJournal in 1999 and sold to Six Apart in 2005. He left SixApart for Google earlier this year. Here’s SUP’s description of what the advisory board’s role will be:
Tags: co:livejournal, co:six-apart, co:SupThe Advisory Board will represent the users, offering you a voice and a forum regarding your role on LiveJournal, as well as LiveJournal’s role in the online world. It will be independent of the LiveJournal, Inc. management team and will oversee issues such as honoring LiveJournal’s community traditions, ensuring privacy, creating user policy and protecting security.
4 Comments
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Yakov said:
The Russians have proved they could grow the LiveJournal community in Russia. For sure, they could do that again with global community.
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E Tu, Six Apart? said:
As a native of former USSR I find this news appaling. Look no further than the ongoing coverage of Duma elections for what kind of country Russia has become and how political dissent is silenced and harrassed.
The advisory board is a joke and a sham. What matters is that any Russian-based company that wants to stay in business would turn its data to FSB (KGB 2.0) in an instant. This means handing over a detailed database of political speech and identifying info to the government. Google and Yahoo incidents pale in comparison - this is about snuffing out the entire generation of Russia’s potential leaders, not a few isolated cases.
Nice job, moral pygmies.
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Yakov said:
Please see how much SUP paid on http://ru.blognation.com
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Alison said:
Good luck to them with developing livejournal and managing it in Russia. As a livejournal user I’ve made lots of great friends on it so I hope it’s a success in Russia.
4 Trackbacks
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Private Equity HUB - peHUB First Read said:
[...] VC-backed Six Apart is selling its LiveJournal blogging platform. But the big M&A news we’re waiting for is Automattic, whose [...]
1:10 pm
Cyrillic Partners » Russian Company Buys LiveJournal said:
[...] Eric Eldon over-reacts to the deal’s political implications at VentureBeat. [...]
7:49 pm
CER links: Cleantech, Kramlich, Russia-China web parallels - China Economic Review said:
[...] VentureBeat: Russian media company buys online community LiveJournal - Russian firm with links to the government buys blog provider; users and activists decry threat to freedom of speech - sounds just like China, too!` [...]
1:04 pm
Roundup: Quattrone is back and banking, LiveJournal rebellion and more » VentureBeat said:
[...] SUP bought LiveJournal, the social network/blog site with a large Russian audience, last year, we were concerned that censorship might ensue. LiveJournal has become a main forum for dissent against the Russian [...]