8 Ways to Sunday

A heads-up to my friends using LiveJournal: your home on the web is about to get bought out.

According to Om Malik, Six Apart — makers of the popular Movable Type blog software — are planning to acquire LiveJournal for an undisclosed amount in stock and cash. The deal is expected to be announced later this month.

I can’t figure out how this fits in with 6A’s TypePad service or their other business plans. Will they be migrating LJ users over to TypePad and forcing the mostly-free user base to pay? Will they incorporate some of the unique features of the LiveJournal community into TypePad? It’s impossible to say at this point, but this much is certain: the LiveJournal platform is open source software, and if the members don’t like the direction 6A goes with it they can easily move to another service established on the same platform elsewhere. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops.

(Props: Om Malik on Broadband via Chris Holland: The Blog)

Update: 1/6/2995 @ 9:05 PM — It’s official, with press releases having been issued by both companies. Stupid Evil Bastard has the details. See also Mena Trott’s (Six Apart’s co-founder and President) own post on the topic and the newly-created “Six Apart LiveJournal Acquisition FAQ.”

There’s a lot more official text on the web about this topic now, and I encourage any concerned LiveJournalers to follow the above links to learn the details. After reading this information for myself, I can safely say that LiveJournal appears to be in good hands and safe from drastic changes.