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News, features and resources for media and publishing professionals.
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Six Apart Acquires LiveJournal
Friday, January 7, 2005 
Six Apart, makers of the Movable Type publishing platform and TypePad personal
weblogging service, announced that it has acquired Danga Interactive, Inc.,
the operators of the popular service LiveJournal, for an undisclosed amount of
stock and cash. The combined user base of both companies exceeds 6.5 million users.
LiveJournal, an online community organized around personal journals, is run by Danga, a Portland, Oregon-based company founded by Brad Fitzpatrick in 1999. LiveJournal has helped fuel the rapid growth of weblogging by offering consumers both free and paid subscriptions to its personal publishing blogging tool, built on open source software. Every week, over 860,000 users update their blogs. LiveJournal's users are predominately in their teens and twenties, younger than users of Six Apart's other products. As part of Six Apart, LiveJournal will continue to operate as a separate division. Brad Fitzpatrick, Danga's founder, president and lead developer, will join Six Apart as the company's chief architect. The Danga staff will remain dedicated to LiveJournal and Six Apart expects the staff to grow as it invests in the service. LiveJournal will continue to distribute a large portion of its software under various open source licenses. Six Apart intends to invest in the LiveJournal software, which will remain separate from Six Apart's Movable Type and TypePad products, with dedicated engineering and support teams for each product. Barak Berkowitz, Six Apart's chief executive officer said the acquisition of LiveJournal makes Six Apart the industry's largest independent provider of weblogging tools. According to a survey released this week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, over 8 million U.S. adults now have weblogs and blog readership jumped by 58% in 2004. "We are now the only company to offer the full range of weblogging tools to the market," said Berkowitz. "We have a service intended for individuals to interact with family and friends through LiveJournal; a hosted service for avid webloggers who want more flexibility and power with TypePad; and the leading server-based solution for power users, corporations and institutions through Movable Type. We welcome LiveJournal users to the Six Apart family, and promise to keep the LiveJournal culture and quality which has earned their devotion." Six Apart Ltd., based in San Francisco, CA, is the company behind the Movable Type publishing platform and the TypePad personal weblogging service. Six Apart was founded by husband and wife team Ben Trott and Mena G. Trott in 2002 and funded by Neoteny Co., Ltd. and August Capital.
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