SixApart Sells LiveJournal to Russian Media Company

molrak writes "SixApart tonight announced the sale of journal/blogging service Livejournal to Russia-based SUP. Original LJ founder Brad Fitzpatrick has chimed in on the situation: 'This is pretty cool because - They're ridiculously excited about LiveJournal, and have been for awhile (they previous purchased advertising rights in Russia, but ended up doing a bunch of Russia-specific LJ development as well). They want to throw a lot of resources at LiveJournal in terms of product development and engineers. "LiveJournal.com, Inc." now stands alone again, focusing on nothing but LJ. Sounds like I'll have more LJ influence (via new role as advisory board member) than I've had recently.'"

Comments

Im wondering...

[renegadesx]

Will that mean LiveJournal will write us from now on?

Putinist Russia

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

Does this mean that any anti-Putin blogging will be noted and passed on to the "proper" authorities?

Re:Putinist Russia

[seasleepy]

You may be joking, but there appears to have been a considerable amount of concern about this when SUP first got involved with LJ -- Alexander Mamut, one of SUP's main investors (or possibly its owner -- I've seen both descriptions in articles), apparently has some ties to Putin. Brad had tried to assuage fears about it at the time, but I unfortunately don't really know how the situation stands on the Russian side after those initial reactions.

As a longtime LJ user, I'm encouraged that Brad's still optimistic about SUP today, and I don't think Six Apart ever really knew exactly what to make of LJ, but I'm still having a hard time getting over a vaguely uneasy feeling about the whole thing.

Re:Putinist Russia

[CRCulver]

It'll still be more free than it would be here.

As a linguist studying minority languages of Russia, I do field work in places where the Putin-aligned local government has had no qualms sending goons to beat women and the elderly with pipes just for speaking or singing songs in the local indigenous language, and opposition figures still get sent to psychiatric hospitals whenever they dare to challenge the ruling party. When has that last happened in the US? Certainly there are some worrying developments in civil liberties, but people can breathe a lot more freely there than in Russia, which is truly one of the scariest places I've visited.

Re:Putinist Russia

[Inzite]

I can tell you've never been to Russia.

I live there. It's cold.

Yes, there are problems with the limited Russian media. However, your definition of Russia as a harsh Big-brother nation run by the local mafia is overly simple and in most cases just flat out wrong.

The mafia don't run Russia any more. Russia is controlled and run by a few very rich corporations and individuals. The number of very rich corporations and individuals is growing on a daily basis.

Dissenting voices do get heard. The problem is that most Russians don't care to listen. Most Russians don't give a shit about politics.

Putin is doing wonders for the economy. Russia is one of the fastest developing countries on the planet, and will continue to grow that way for at least the next 5-10 years. The reason Russia is controlled by one party is because that one party is doing wonderful things for the average living standards of people across the country.

In another 4-8 years, Putin's power in the Russian government will have declined, and Russia will start to move towards a true, multi-party system as all those wealthy companies and individuals step in to fill the ex-Putin void. However, in the mean time there's no reason for Russia to change, and the vast majority of Russians will be much better off if the status quo is maintained for a couple years longer.

P.S. In Russia, Gary Kasparov is a joke. And 95% of what the New York Times writes about Russia is pure tripe.

Filtering and Censorship

[Macgrrl]

What will be interesting to see is whether the filtering and censorship of LJ will be more or less stringent than it was previously.

Earlier this year we had uproar due to fanfic heavy accounts being blocked and assorted accusations regarding slashfic being porn and potentially kiddie porn in the case of Harry Potter fic.

I wonder if moving out of the US juristriction for the 'publisher' will affect the degree in which copyright violations are pursued.

Prediction: no more censorship

[tetromino]

If you look at the backstory for the rise of SUP, the whole thing started when the abuse team tried to apply American standards to Russian bloggers. You see, the Russian internets culture is different. You post whatever you want to post. For example, if you feel that you want to personally execute every member of [insert group of people here], burn the corpses in a fire, and piss in the ashes, then you should definitely blog about it. Self-censorship is for wimps and politicians. A few years ago, American lj abuse members attempted to ban some Russian bloggers (for posting something about murdering NATO soldiers, iirc). The Russian blogosphere exploded in indignation, and the lj management decided that the only way to sort out what was going on with its Russian-speaking users was to offload them to a Russian company. Hence, SUP, which acquired the rights to the Russian-speaking part of lj last year - and now, has bought the whole service.

If the behavior that SUP has found acceptable in its segment of lj is anything to go by, lj filtering and censorship may be set to disappear entirely.