Fantastic news! Mena Trott of Six Apart has announced via a very detailed blog post, natch, that Six Apart has acquired LiveJournal. This is excellent news because now that we've got huge players like Google (Blogger) and Microsoft (MSN Spaces) in the blogging mix, ultra cool little blogging companies like Six Apart need to bulk-up to avoid being run-over.
Six Apart has posted a shorter FAQ about all this for people who want a quick fix on what's happening. One reassurance I appreciate is that Six Apart promises to keep the LiveJournal quality in tact and avoid things like "removing the free level", "plastering the sites with ads" and "owning user content". Brad Fitzpatrick, founder of LiveJournal (a Portland, Oregon firm), posted to his blog to express LJ's view on this deal:
The most immediate changes will be that we'll start to get prettier... more styles, themes, etc. Six Apart is really good at that and we're not. - Brad Fitzpatrick, LiveJournalTechnologies and other assets can now be swapped (and comingled when it makes sense) between the 2 services and perhaps lines of communication will be opened between them reducing the SNS island problem mentioned in my last post.
I love it that the friends and family journal blogging that is LiveJournal's hallmark will be combined with TypePad's less diary -link, opinion, hobby and news blogging. Each side will be expanded in good ways. Hopefully, some of the viral community feeling that makes LiveJournal such a success will rub off on TypePad.
Check it out!