Social networking in disarray as Livejournal falls to the Russians

THE INTERWEB is alive to the sound of a million bloggers screaming in anguish as Livejournal's parent company, Six Apart, announced it sold the controversial social networking site to Russian company SUP.

Although described in the press release as an international online
media company, the outfit's focus hitherto has been almost exclusively within the Russian Union, and includes running Livejournal's Russian servers.

Six Apart purchased Livejournal from its founder Brad Fitzpatrick at the beginning of 2005, so it comes as a surprise that after less than two years it feels the need to "focus on [its] core products" (that is, the ones it didn't buy in). The firm does appear to be hanging on to a lot of the infrastructure behind Livejournal, such as the OpenID authentication service, suggesing that Six Apart's investment was more about acquiring expertise and control over technology than it ever was about acquiring Livejournal as a business.

With recent outcry from self-appointed paedophile police, Warriors for Innocence, still fresh in their minds and an increasingly cranky and demanding user base, Six Apart may simply have decided LiveJournal was no longer worth the trouble it was causing.

As to how Livejournal will fare under it's new masters, only time will tell. Already the conspiracy theorists are crawling out of the
woodwork, with one Russian blogger suggesting that the purchase is a cunning ploy by Putin et al to shut down political dissent voiced within Russian Livejournal communities.

SUP plan to set up an Advisory Board containing Brad Fitzpatrick himself as well as some elected Livejournal members, and have also announced a 100 day plan for driving development
of the site software under the new regime. µ