Live Journal have just made the news that Six Apart are buying them out official at Big news… Six Apart and LiveJournal! They attempt to answer the ‘why’ question with the following reasons:
‘Our companies are more alike than different.
We both use Perl.
Together we form super robot that’s stronger than the sum of its parts.
Super robots can fight super companies.
They respect us, we respect them.
We have a number of features they don’t.
We have experience with making “inward-facing” community sites, whereas their sites/products tend to be “outward-facing”. They want some of that inward-facing action.
Because we’re awesome.’
Six Apart also make the announcement official:
‘Six Apart, makers of the highly acclaimed Movable Type publishing platform and TypePad personal weblogging service, today announced that it has acquired Danga Interactive, Inc., the operators of the popular service LiveJournal, for an undisclosed amount of stock and cash. With the acquisition, Six Apart solidifies its position as the industry’s recognized leader in weblogging software across all markets, and LiveJournal can continue its rapid growth trajectory under Six Apart’s umbrella. As of today, the combined user base of both companies exceeds 6.5 million users, with thousands more added daily.’
Mena has also some interesting comments on her blog:
‘Brad’s initial question — an expected one — was “why does Six Apart want to acquire Danga (LiveJournal)?” The answer was simple; “Many of our weaknesses are LiveJournal’s strengths and many of LiveJournal’s weaknesses are our strengths.”’
