rant whine 'splain espouse: Big news in the blogosphere: Six Apart buys LiveJournal

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Big news in the blogosphere: Six Apart buys LiveJournal

Ynnej can no longer stodgily claim that "a LiveJournal is not a blog," since Six Apart (makers of Movable Type and TypePad) today announced that it has purchased Danga Interactive, the parent of LiveJournal.com.

For those unfortunates who have been living in a hole for the past year or two, bloggers have been responsible for breaking all kinds of national and international stories, blogs have had a tremendous impact on coverage of the Iraq war and the 2004 election, Time magazine included bloggers among the People Who Mattered in the Person of the Year issue, and "blog" was Merriam-Webster's #1 word of 2004.

The number of bloggers is growing rapidly, as are the readers. Movable Type is the industry leader in high-end server-end blogging software (MT powered the blogs of both George Bush and John Kerry's websites, for example), and TypePad is its mid-level counterpart.

LiveJournal, on the other hand, has been around slightly longer. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily more mature. Most LJ users are in their teens and 20s, while MT and TypePad users tend to be a little older. And LJ is certainly not as robust nor as flexible, and it certainly leaves a lot to be desired in its UI and it's overall look. It's not pretty. But LJ also has its benefits (it's open source, for example, and has a very large user base), especially for the segment it serves, and that's exactly why it's a great purchase for Six Apart.

Rumors started flying a couple days ago about this purchase, and there were a lot of fears, on the LJ users' side, that Six Apart would change the fee structure, change LJ's open source status, and other such idle chatter. But posts by both SA president Mena Trott and LJ founder Brad Fitzpatrick should bely those fears.

LJ will actually remain a separate service with separate a develpoment team. Interestingly, though, the LJ employees will be relocating from Portland, OR, to Six Apart's new San Francisco headquarters (SA moved from San Mateo over New Year's, but I have no idea where their new office is).

As a side note, although my own blog has been powered by Blogger since I started it a year and a half ago, I've been planning to move to Movable Type for six months. And it should be happening soon. I also have a LiveJournal account, by the way, but it's only so I can comment on my friends' LJs.